The Silent Land
by Ju-dou
Summary: As war rips through the generations, long held secrets emerge and a past once hidden is awoken.
1. Chapter 1

_For secrets are edged tools, and must be kept from children and from fools._

October, 1917.

"What am I to do?" Her voice is thick with fear, and her hand reaches desperately to clasp his.

"My Lady, you must marry him. I'm afraid there is little else you can do." The good doctor pats her hand matter of factly and extricates himself from the bedside.

No. Oh please, in the name of all that is merciful, no. Finally she is ruined, irreparably, irretrievably ruined.

She will not marry him, she cannot, she does not love him nor he her. _There is little else you can do. _She certainly cannot wait. She had done everything not to be forced or cajoled into marriage and now found it rearing in front of her as her only means of survival in decent society. These thoughts surged through her mind as her hands shook and her heart raced, but they were little more than distant musings too fleeting to grasp. She was so afraid, she could barely breath. Mary clenched her fists, willing an element of control to return, but the room felt as if it were continuing to spin, faster and faster so that it was almost unbearable.

_Just let me die_, she pleaded with God, _let this end. I am not strong_.

October, 1939.

I know you, yet I do not. I stand here and I wait; I wait because tomorrow I will go, and if I am lucky I will return, but I know that many will not. You receive me into your drawing room and place down the elaborate embroidery in your hand when I enter. You smile and it warms your face; your beauty is unforgiving. _Teddy._ You breathe my name and take my hand as I kneel in front of your chair. Your nails dig into my palm slightly and your eyes shine - _my darling boy_ – and your voice is barely a whisper.

I am twenty-one years old, but in that moment, I ache to remain at my mother's side, clutching her skirts and basking in her adoration. _Teddy._ You reach down and take my face between your cool palms, and now your demeanour has changed; you are firm, controlled, unwavering. _You will come home._

When I was a child, you would take me for miles, guiding my little pony by his rein as I sat atop the saddle, imperious and confident. Mama and I, as close as was possible. You were never cold, never distant; you loved me openly and unreservedly. I knew what it was to be cherished. I felt your love in everything and was spoilt in it. I was like many children, selfish and arrogant in the belief that the world turned only for me. Mama's precious boy. I remember very little of him, of Papa; he is a blurred figure on the periphery of my vision. It was as if he was never really part of our world, that he was somehow disconnected from us. I cannot remember if I loved him once.

You were always mine, but as I grew, I began to realize that you were somebody else outside of our home.

We laughed; you had a laugh that was light and free flowing, a ready embrace with arms that enveloped me in warmth. I had a nurse, but it is a testament to our relationship that I remember little of my other caregivers, of the people who fed and bathed me. When we went to the 'big house,' as I called it, on a Sunday and periodically for family occasions, I would run riot, untethered by your attention, because there it always seemed you were not entirely present. You were tense and poised; you left me to be indulged by Carson, who let me sit behind his desk and play with the telephone and his blotter. I would eat cakes and drink cocoa at the big table in the staff dining room. It was only later that I realized how special this was, how much this break with formality meant.

When my little cousins arrived, I played with them, let the girls ride on my back and chased them down endless corridors whilst they shrieked with delight. The noise of us children filled that grand house on those rare days when we were all there together. That house, which lacked the every day presence of children, it exhaled around us in an atmosphere that only children can bring.

I remember now one of the few occasions you were forced out of your practiced role, broken from a silence the reason for and extent of which I didn't know. I had been playing with Louisa, and I cannot remember whose fault it was, but one of us fell in the drawing room, in the process taking down a large clock encased in decorative china. It smashed and we both froze. Louisa's hand grasped mine, and we exchanged horrified looks.

"What have you done?" Her eyes were alight as she pushed open the door and grabbed me by the arm, hard so her nails pinched my skin.

"We're sorry Cousin Lavinia; it was an accident," Louisa sobbed miserably.

She dragged me into the library where her husband was seated in a chair, a book in his lap. He looked up, smiling as he saw us, before the expression dropped from his face as he took in the situation.

"This child has broken my mother's clock in the drawing room. It is beyond repair!"

"I'm sure it was an accident. Is that right, Teddy?"

I nodded, avoiding his kind eyes as he shifted in discomfort under Lavinia's trembling glare.

"I'm very sorry," I said quietly.

"Well that is all that can be said, don't you think, darling?"

She was still holding my arm and squeezed it tighter so it stung.

"You're hurting me!" I cried, twisting in her grip.

You entered the room then, and I felt you pull me from her grasp, clasping me to you. You turned on her, and your eyes flashed dangerously. You bent to me and pulled up the sleeve of my shirt where on my forearm four red welts were rising.

"Look what she's done!" And now you were speaking to Cousin Matthew, looking hard into his eyes, a palpable tension encasing the room. "Look what she's done to his arm!"

"I can see," he said in the quiet understated way he had.

"What I have done? What about the damage this child has caused? He's out of control; he needs to be disciplined." Lavinia bit her bottom lip, and her small frame quivered.

"I never want to see or hear of you touching my child again, is that clear?" you hissed. "I will discipline him if necessary."

"Spare the rod, spoil the child," she responded weakly.

"Do not tell me about the correct way to parent. You know nothing of the subject!"

She withdrew as if you had struck her before gathering herself.

"Are you going to allow her to speak to your wife like that?" she demanded, turning on Matthew, her voice quavering.

It was as if the house around us held its breath and paused with him. The air became stifling, and I recall longing for an interruption as the question hung heavy in the air. He gave no answer. He hesitated and then made as if about to speak before falling silent again. Her face contorted, and she swept from the room, leaving the three of us standing there, frozen in our positions. I remember it as one of only two occasions you, he and I were alone together. I was little more than seven years old, but with a child's perception, I felt something shift in the atmosphere. I looked up to your faces and saw your eyes locked to each other. Then he knelt down next to me and kissed my arm before rolling down my sleeve.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Two words that were laden with such meaning, saturated with barely harnessed emotion, as he looked up at you from his position on the floor beside me. He placed his hand on my cheek and stroked my flushed skin with his thumb. His blue eyes bore into mine for a moment before he looked down, and when I caught his eye again, there were tears on their bright surface. I often thought back to this incident and, as other pieces of the puzzle slipped into place, something began to dawn on me, and then I knew. I know, Mama. I have known for a long time.

Tonight we will return to Downton, as my family bids me farewell. I know that going there causes you pain, and I wish I knew how to relieve it. Would it give you peace to learn that I know? I am not sure it would, but on the verge of the moment I go to war, I feel the desire to resolve the things that burden me. I cannot decide if this is too selfish a wish to indulge, too dangerous a Pandora's box.

You lean down and kiss my forehead as you did when I was a boy. You smooth my hair, and your hand is shaking. We will have only this moment for Grand-mamma is here, dressed for dinner, and her face is stricken as she draws me from my position. She looks to you and takes one of your hands and one of mine. _You must be returned to us_, she says. _Yes_, I agree, _yes I will return_._ Do not fear for me, for I am strong. I am my mother's son._

November, 1917.

She sat at the dressing table whilst her sisters and mother perched around the room talking amongst themselves. Anna stood behind her adjusting a comb into the back of her hair. She looked into the mirror, steeling herself for what could prove to be the most difficult night of her life. It was taking every ounce of resolve to hold her composure.

"Why are you intent on marrying in winter, Mary? It will be so dreary," Edith sighed.

"Try not to be quite so jealous." Mary rolled her eyes in response, her lips tight.

"I don't see the point in long engagements either," Sybil said.

"No, indeed. Why wait?" their mother agreed.

"Yes, he might change his mind," Edith quipped sharply.

"Edith!" Cora snapped.

Their mother rose, shepherding the two younger girls with her to the door.

"See you downstairs." She smiled at her eldest daughter's back as Mary remained stiffly in her position.

Mary couldn't meet her mother's eyes, and if she could barely confront her, how was she to face Matthew at dinner tonight? She shut her eyes, wishing herself far away. A hard painful lump rose in her throat, and she doubted even a morsel of food was going to be able to pass her lips. This was so very wrong, and she was disgusted with herself, beyond disgusted; she could scarcely bear her own reflection.

"It isn't too late." Anna's voice was quiet behind her.

"Oh, Anna!" She bent forward with a gasping breath. "What must you think of me?"

"M'Lady, if you wish to hear my opinion..." she spoke gently, and Mary turned towards her, clasping the maid's hands and looking up at her desperately, "I think you must decide whether you can truly live with a lie for the rest of your life. I know I could not. I'm sorry if I've spoken out of turn."

"No, you're right; of course you're right." Mary turned her face away.

"But you won't tell him?"

"What if he will not have me?" The tears streamed down her cheeks now, and the maid knelt down next to her, still clasping her hands.

He was standing in the Great Hall, Lavinia beside him, her arm in his. She was about to shatter their world. Did she really believe Matthew loved this girl? No, not truly; arrogantly, she did not accept that. Certainly what had happened between them would never have occurred if that had been the case. She was as sure as she could be of that.

The terrible doubt remained, gnawing at her inside. She felt the colour rise in her cheeks as he caught sight of her; it was the first time they had seen each other since that day. Since that day in the woods. She crumpled at the memory. He looked pained and terribly guilty. Guilt. They were bound in it; it shackled them. He gave her a curt nod. She wanted to take hold of him, but he had moved past her almost as if he had knocked her aside.

"Hello darling," Richard's hand slipped around her waist, and she could not help but flinch.

Matthew chose that moment to look back, and their eyes met as her fiancé kissed her cheek. She saw everything in that look, everything they were and had been and everything they may never be. The War had returned him to Downton once more. Her prayers were answered, but could it be so simple, could it be so easy when she harbored this secret, when they were both engaged to other people?

"Congratulations," Matthew said, his eyes fixed ahead over the dinner table.

"Matthew..."

"No please don't say anything, Mary. Mother told me of your engagement." He seemed to be struggling to speak, and when his blue eyes turned to hers, she was horrified to see the pain that lay there. "I felt I must make a decision of my own, and I too have an announcement to make." He cleared his throat and looked to Lavinia who blushed in her seat.

A chill ran down the back of her neck, and nausea flooded over her so that her eyes were shut when she heard the words that came from his mouth.

"Lavinia and I have married. We cannot know what the war will bring, and we felt we must grasp the moment."

She did not realize she had let out an audible gasp, which caused everyone around the table to turn to look at her. She felt removed from herself as the room and it's occupants faded out of focus around her. Her stomach heaved, and a fist tightened around her heart. Out of sight, she clutched the underside of the table as she felt the blood drain from her face. A sickening light-headedness overwhelmed her, and the last thing she remembered was the sound of Matthew saying her name as she fell from the chair beside him.

The room erupted and chairs scraped back around her. As she came to moments later, Matthew was by her side, his face marred with worry as he removed his uniform jacket and placed it beneath her head. She could have told him then, it hovered on the tip of her tongue - _I'm having your child_ – but seconds later her mother and Isobel were at her side.

"I'm sorry," were the words she uttered instead.

October, 1939.

I sit alone in the library whilst the party continues elsewhere in the house. The library was always your grandfather's room. His presence remains strongly here, his firm, guiding hand. He loved you so very much. His only grandson. I can see him now, the way he cradled you the day you were born, your tiny head fitting into the palm of his hand. _Papa, please don't cry_, I told him, feeling my own tears fall. _I am just so very happy_, he replied, not deigning to remove the tear tracks on his face. He would be so proud of the young man you have become.

The very thought of you leaving here, being stolen by another blasted war little more than twenty years later seems a cruel twist of fate. You planned to become a surgeon; you could be anything and you are truly everything to me. How could I lose you? It is unfathomable; inconceivably unfair. Papa would say that I must let you go, cherish what is brave and honorable in you, and pray for your safe return. Oh how I prayed for your father, Teddy, and what a dark place I entered, an interminable blackness as I begged for divine intervention from a God in whom I scarcely believed.

During dinner you were as you always are, planning what to do with your first leave, promising to be back for Louisa's ball, but I saw a flicker in your eyes, a darkness there as you made your cousins laugh. You are no fool, and you wish to protect us all from what may be inevitable. You cannot protect me from this. You do not know how unbearable it feels to part with that little boy who held my hand so tightly. My sweet boy. The first moment I saw you, I loved you with an intensity that was frightening, a grip that was almost painful, and I felt so ashamed that I could ever have wished you away.

It is almost unbelievable when I look at you now, well over six feet tall, to remember that tiny baby. But remember him I do. Your eyes were a deep unfathomable blue, and you gazed up at me, knowing and innocence in one look. You did not cry but your brows knitted indignantly. _Why am I here?,_ you seemed to ask. A little stranger. I could only promise to love you, for what else can be guaranteed? I feel so lucky to have been given you, and letting you go now is as difficult as parting with that little infant would have been.

I hope you have been happy; I hope your life so far can make up in some way for what you must now endure. I have lied to you, I cannot say I lied to protect you; I protected myself, and I do not know how you could forgive me. I was selfish; I could not bear the shame, but I have no more room for regrets, not now. If you never return, I must know that you died with the truth. You are honest and good, Teddy, and I know the high regard in which you hold truth and justice. I cannot give you justice but I can give you what remains in my heart.


	2. Chapter 2

_There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. _

November, 1917.

She sat very still as Anna brushed her hair in long, firm strokes. She felt as if she moved too suddenly she would surely vomit, she had not cried but the sensation waited like an incoming wave at the entrance of her throat. If she started she could not imagine how she would stop. How she would prevent it swarming and metastasizing around her until she succumbed to oblivion. There was an abyss awaiting her and she could only hope that she would close her eyes and not wake up.

Anna helped her into the turned down bed, she was weak and held onto the maid's arm unsteadily.

"Can I fetch you anything, m'Lady?"

Mary could only shake her head as she turned onto her side, the bed sheets gathered tightly to her chin. She heard the door shut and then she could bear it no more. The tears came slowly at first but quickened until great gasping sobs emanated from her lips. It is too late. There was only one road open to her and she must take it. Could she even carry this through, Richard was not a stupid man, he at least would know that the child could not be his. Perhaps he would not even care, she knew that she were to serve as little more than a trophy wife whom he could tuck away and present when the occasion called for class and beauty. If there were whispers and speculation it would no longer matter, her reputation was of no account once she was married, she would be of no account once she were married.

There was a light tap at the door and her mother slipped into the room.

"Oh, Mary," she said softly, sitting down on the bed and resting a hand on her daughters shoulder as a shuddering cry trembled through her. "I'm afraid it was not meant to be."

"Don't, Mama," her voice muffled and hoarse. "You cannot begin to understand."

"Then try and help me to, for heavens sake, Mary," Cora raised her eyes to the ceiling, part in exasperation.

"Trust me Mama, you don't want to know!" she turned a tear stained face to her mother.

"What do you mean? I'm afraid there is little you can do now that would shock me."

"Do not be so sure of that," she replied, a humorless laugh unnatural on her lips.

Cora surveyed her eldest daughter, head strong, stubborn, but in her eyes a little of the fight had left.

"You can wash your hands of me now, Mama, in a few weeks I will be married."

"Do not talk as if I do not want the best for you. Sir Richard would not have been your fathers or my choice but he is yours, is that not a small victory?"

"He is my choice because now I have no other." Mary sobbed and a desperate sadness hung in her words.

"Then you must learn to live with it, my darling."

December, 1917.

He sat stiffly in his seat and watched the familiar undulations of the Yorkshire countryside flash by outside the window. The day was bright, painfully highlighting the skeletal trees against a cloudless sky. A frost remained and looked set to last well into the morning, he had not slept on the journey but had occasionally rested his head against the humming window and found it freezing. He felt numb, his ears rang with the sounds of Flanders, the smell hung in his nostrils and when he closed his eyes there was only the horror. Desperation, and the blood of deaths that were neither quick or merciful, stained his very soul. He had been brave, he could only be courageous, his men expected him to lead them and lead he must.

He had married Lavinia, little more than two months ago, an impulsive act he would never have imagined himself capable of. It was undoubtedly selfish but somehow it kept a part of him anchored to the ground, held to something that was pure and unspoiled in a world grown unreliable. The dream of an imagined future he didn't expect to see. It had also closed a door, he could not think too deeply about it because he was afraid of what he would find lying across the part of him stripped raw by war. She could so easily consume him and he had let her, he had let her because he thought he would die at the front. Die face down on a cold unforgiving ground, a bullet in his chest, and he could not confront that without the memory of her. _Mary, remember me this way._

She would marry next week because it was what she had to do; he understood that, they had released each other. _If you love me you will let me go._ He could not fight and imagine a life with Mary because that was something he would never have been prepared to lose again. He could not take a risk with the only true part of himself that remained. She was not safe, he could not trust himself with her, he could not trust his heart with her.

He felt so little now. He hardly knew himself. Life would continue, he would confront each day at battle as if he would never return to this place again. The place he had bitterly resented not so many years ago, the role he was not born to, not prepared for; now he wished only for that simpler time. He had told no-one he was coming. His eight days leave unexpected, almost unbelievable, when he considered the timing, perhaps God had a sense of humor. He would not stay for the wedding, he would go to London to see Lavinia, but first he could not resist the draw of Downton. Of her.

"I'm sorry, doctor but I do wish you hadn't come." Mary passed a hand over her pale face and sighed.

"Your mother is concerned, my Lady, she wishes you to be well before the wedding." Dr Clarkson replied carefully.

"Well you can tell her that I'm quite well," she held his gaze steadily.

"How often are you vomiting?"

"Several times a day if you must know, can I expect a magic cure?"

"Time usually, you might try ginger or peppermint," he paused for a moment, "after four months I would expect it to begin easing very soon...am I to take it that your mother does not know of your...situation?"

"No she does not and I expect you to have some discretion," Mary snapped.

"You need not remind me of my duty, my Lady," the doctor stood, his expression affronted. "Rest, and inform me if your symptoms worsen."

"I'm sorry to have wasted your time, I know you are busy with the injured."

"Good day, my Lady."

She rested back against the pillow as he left the room and her stomach heaved, she felt truly terrible and could hardly be surprised that her mother was beginning to grow concerned. She had lost weight and felt weak and shaky, it hardly boded well for smooth running nuptials. She had survived the weeks since Matthew's announcement predominantly by either shutting herself away or by composing such a cool exterior that little could penetrate. The house was in uproar with convalescing soldiers and her family seemed to be responding to the challenge where she could not. Granny and Aunt Rosamund were orchestrating the wedding preparations and she nodded and smiled in the right places, all the time desperate to escape, to lock herself away and simply scream.

"I've brought you some tea, m'Lady."

Mary opened her eyes and managed a small smile of thanks as Anna positioned the tray over her knees.

"How are you feeling?" the maid asked, gently.

"Awful," she replied. "But a lot better than those poor souls downstairs."

"More men arrived this morning, they're so young."

"It seems terribly unfair."

"Have you had any word from Captain Crawley?" Anna asked, catching her eye as she poured the tea.

Mary shook her head.

"He sent a telegram to Papa, he is still in Belgium. He doesn't write to me."

"Have you written to him?"

"What could I say, Anna? I can give him no comfort." She looked away, her voice cracking.

"Sir Richard has just arrived from London."

"Has he? I suppose I shall have to go down then." She picked up the cup and took a sip of tea, her hand shook and Anna reached to steady her.

"I think you're being very brave, m'Lady."

"I'm not brave, all I can do now is try to prevent anyone else being destroyed by this mess," she replied honestly, watching the maid's kind face. " I know you don't agree."

"I only wish you could be happy."

"That is more than I deserve."

"Hello, doctor."

"Sir Richard," Dr Clarkson nodded curtly, eyeing the other man as he handed his coat and hat to the footman.

"I take it you are visiting the injured, I do hope they are not swelling the guest list." He smiled at his own joke.

"I don't think many of them are fit to attend a wedding," the doctor replied coolly.

"Well indeed, my only concern is that the bride is fit."

"Quite, and as long as Lady Mary rests I hope she will be."

"Is she unwell?" Sir Richard asked, his dark eyes studying the doctors face.

"I think you know more of that than I do, good day," he nodded replacing his hat and beckoning for his coat.

"I don't think I quite understand your meaning," the other man replied silkily, his eyes narrowing.

"I think you understand me well enough."

"No I do not. Perhaps you should make an attempt at speaking plainly," he said, moving to stand in the doctor's way and leaning in towards him.

Dr Clarkson cast his eyes around the entrance hall and lowered his voice.

"I was alluding to Lady Mary's condition, and timely as this wedding is I'm afraid she may struggle to make it through the service without vomiting, now if that is all I will wish you luck, good bye."

He stood back and nodded in farewell. If he were shocked he did not show it. He prided himself on remaining collected in all but the most dangerous of situations. This was not dangerous, no, this was an opportunity. A way to tighten the leash, for he did not want his quarry to slip away at the last moment. He had doubted her commitment to what seemed like the most convenient of marriages, at least in his eyes, and he had cast around for a way to insure himself against failure. What luck, he smiled to himself, what tremendous luck.

At night as she lay awake, she sometimes heard men's screams, each one pierced her heart and each one was Matthew. Many of the men were in tremendous pain, most were shell shocked, Sybil told her. They needed someone to hold their hand as they sweated and writhed in twisted sheets. She admired her youngest sister, her earnest devotion to providing comfort to those who could not be comforted. Sybil had gently urged Mary to become involved, to talk to the men and she had hesitantly agreed, tried to welcome the distraction it would provide.

They lay broken, shattered in pieces and she felt a fraud, who was she to talk to them of hope. How could she understand the life they had lost for the freedom of others, because they wished to or because they had no choice. What had she ever done to qualify her to provide any measure of comfort to anyone. She had only ever acted in her own interests, with her own future, her own happiness in mind; even now. Even now when she was responsible for the life of someone else, someone who would be affected forever by the decisions she made. She had not once thought of the child she carried, of what they deserved from life.

She made her way between the beds; she could not meet their eyes. Sybil gave her a wave and a smile from across the room as she stopped by the bed of the young soldier she had come to see.

"Hello, Harry," she spoke quietly, unsure if he slept.

"Lady Mary." He turned over and opened his eyes to meet hers.

She swallowed her revulsion at the sight of his poor face, one side hollowed and distorted so as to look barely human. She sat on the chair beside his bed and took his hand as she always did.

"Mary, please."

"Mary." The side of his mouth that remained intact tweaked into a smile. "You look awful if you don't mind me saying so, my lady."

"Don't embarrass me with compliments, Lieutenant," she quipped in return.

"Nerves I imagine, cold feet perhaps?"

Mere weeks ago she would not have allowed this man to talk to her with such familiarity but now very little seemed to matter.

"Have you always been so forward?"

"Oh no, but now I see little point wasting time with pleasantries."

"I'm not sure how far that will get you," she replied with a smile.

"Well I'm unlikely to get far with this face so I may as well be honest when given the opportunity." He met her gaze unflinchingly and she returned it as best she could.

She did not patronize him with denial or empty condolences. She had come to learn that polite social etiquette had no place here.

"A wedding hardly seems appropriate at a time like this."

"If you love him there's little that is more appropriate." The young soldier moved in the bed awkwardly, the place where his legs should be conspicuously empty. "Do you love him?"

"No." She lowered her head, shame coloring her cheeks.

"Then why?" He leaned forwards, holding her hand a little tighter.

"Mary, I'm sorry but we need to change Lieutenant Demby's dressings." Cousin Isobel stood by the bedside, a trolley laden with bandages beside her.

She nodded and gave his hand a final squeeze. As she crossed the room towards Sybil she looked back and watched Harry bracing himself against the headboard, his arms stretched behind him to take hold of the bars. Isobel drew the screens around the bed and moments later she heard a muffled cry and the hum of the auxiliary nurse's soothing words.

"Mary?" Sybil asked, placing her hand on her sister's arm. "It's horrid isn't it but his dressings become so soiled and have to be changed at least daily."

Mary swallowed.

"Yes, it is horrid."

"Would you like some tea? Perhaps you could sit with him again when Cousin Isobel is finished?"

"No, I'll come back tomorrow." She gave her sister's hand a quick squeeze. "I'm proud of you, Sybil."

You're a better person than I, she said to herself. Looking at Harry was like facing her own worst nightmare, Matthew, broken beyond all recognition, confined to a hospital bed. Or worse. She forced herself to face it, like applying pressure to a fresh bruise, she punished herself this way. As she left the room she heard him cry out, a guttural howl, and she imagined the bandages eased from his necrotic limbs, black and stiff with congealed blood and extudate. The image made her head spin and she shut her eyes for a moment, placing a steadying hand on a nearby table.

"Mary?"

She heard his voice and imagined it could be nothing but a dream, her name on his lips swept through her and goosebumps rose on her arms. She hardly dared open her eyes. _Matthew._ He stood in front of her, his brow furrowed, a hand extended slightly towards her without touching her. Not a hallucination surely, flesh and bones, unharmed. Before she could stop herself she reached forward and took hold of his forearm tightly. _Oh, Matthew._

"You look like you've seen a ghost," he said, a small smile playing on his lips.

"I was afraid I had."

She felt herself sink into his eyes, but a vice had tightened around her throat and she released him.

"Matthew, this is a pleasant surprise." Sir Richard cut between them and her heart thudded into her stomach as the two men shook hands. " Now I must steal my fiancee away for a moment I'm afraid." He smiled and placed a firm hand against her back.

"Of course." Matthew nodded but his eyes remained on her.

What could she expect of him if she did not tell him the truth? Did she expect to be rescued from this, did she hope for a saviour? She felt as if the tangle of lies she found herself in were dragging her towards an inevitable conclusion. She could fling out her arms in an attempt to slow the pace but not without having herself broken against passing obstacles in the process. It was a sick irony that if she had accepted Matthew when given the opportunity, this child would have been what they had all prayed for, honor restored and the family secured. The world had changed.

_You may need him._ Those had been her mother's words and how right she had been but not in the way she had intended. She did need him, not to save her from shame or protect her family from scandal, she needed him like breath into her lungs.

October, 1939.

I have seen death before and I have dismissed it. I have felt it's rancid breath against my neck and it's fingers along my ribs. I have heard it, whispering in my ear, luring me away with a slippery hand in mine. I lay awake and I could hardly see but I knew it was there, I listened and I heard the voices around me as if they were in another room - _We must pray he survives the night_ - I thought distantly that perhaps I were already dead but I would not go without a fight. No, I fought, you taught me to fight. You sat beside me and although I could not move my head I tried to look at you as you sponged my face and changed my sodden sheets.

You talked to me through the night. I slipped in and out of consciousness and occasionally felt myself moan in pain. I saw things, terrible things, climbing the walls of the room, scratching at the window. I threw myself around the bed, I heard myself screaming and felt a fever that convulsed through me gripping my body. You must have been afraid. Mama, you must have feared for me then. _Papa!_ I cried. I cried for him. _Help me, Papa!_ And he came, I didn't remember at once but as I recovered weeks later the memory began to return, dripping into my mind like a dream recalled.

I lay on my side and you lay slumped forward from the chair so that your head rested beside me. I felt pain, everywhere, a crushing sickness and I opened my eyes to cry for your attention. The door was opening and I clutched at my sheets, afraid, as a dark shadow slipped into the room. The curtains at the window were open and a silvery light hung like a cobweb, highlighting shadows and shapes around me as this figure eased you upwards and helped you settle back in the arm chair. His face was revealed to me then and it was Papa. _Papa._ I breathed but no sound came out. I cried because I was frightened, because I was in pain and he reached out and stroked my cheek like he had that day in the library.

He leaned forwards and hooked his arms under my knees and behind my shoulders. I remember hanging like a rag doll and lolling against his chest. I felt him kiss my hair. He carried me through the house, down corridors and stairs and then he took me outside. I felt the cool air after what had been an interminable number of days in my sick bed, I felt it sooth my skin as he sat down with me on what must have been the slope of grass falling away from the back of the house. He held me to him in his lap as if I were a small baby. I felt his tears, hot and wet as they slipped down his face and onto my forehead as he bent his head to kiss me once more. My eyes stared blankly upwards but afterwards I could see him so clearly, every detail, perfect in my recollection.

"I love you, Teddy." I heard him whisper into the still, translucent night.

We were released from everything there, as if we had stepped aside into a place that existed only for that moment. I do not know how long we sat there but I felt my breathing ease, fleetingly I thought that I would like to leave now, to stay here in his arms forever in spirit and face no more of this world I could not understand. I was just a child then. He returned me to my bed and if I died a least we had had that stitch in time, that private missing piece. He fed me water with a spoon, patiently, desperately, as his hand shook a little and the metal clanked on my teeth. I was tired, so very tired and I closed my eyes - _Good night, Papa_ - and I think that he heard for I felt strong arms comfort me as I slipped into a fitful sleep.

_Let me go, and know that I will return, even if it is only in your memories._


	3. Chapter 3

_I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep._

December, 1917.

Fools rush in. He would have to be careful, he was adept at using any information in his possession to achieve what it was he desired; he had made a living from it. As with any scandalous story one had to be careful how much one revealed to the subjects and at what juncture. Richard mused upon this as he dressed for dinner. He could have guessed but he had not needed to, he saw everything in their brief exchange in that ghastly make shift hospital ward. Something, perhaps a spark of jealousy had tugged his mouth into a slight grimace and he had intervened when otherwise he may have watched unseen for a few moments more. Was he angry? No. Love and devotion had not been part of his proposal to Mary, he was not sentimental, he knew she saw him very much as he saw her; a worthy foil. However it was rather unpleasant to find himself in receipt of the result of another man's actions, as beneficial as it may end up being for him.

He had never possessed any desire to be a father, it was not a responsibility that appealed to him. Infants he found inconsequential, children unfathomable, and he failed to understand the erstwhile devotion lavished on them by their parents. He supposed he could pretend, he could certainly pay for a public school education and a life of privilege. Surely a small price to expend for the elevation in his position that marrying Mary would provide. He would hardly have to play with the child or bathe it, it need not require any extra effort on his part. What he must eliminate now was the new element of risk attached to this development. Clearly it had driven Mary's desire to accelerate the wedding preparations but now that Matthew had returned there was the threat that she may baulk at the final post. That would not do, that would not do at all.

No, he thought as he straightened his collar, there could be no mistakes at this late stage.

"I cannot remember the last time we were graced with your presence at dinner, Mary." Her grandmother raised an arched eyebrow and surveyed her eldest granddaughter as the women gathered in the drawing room.

"You are feeling better, dear, aren't you?" Cora asked, anxiously.

"Yes, much." She lied.

"We can collect the dress from Ripon tomorrow, are you excited?"

"Of course."

"Goodness, Mary, do not allow yourself to be overcome with enthusiasm will you?" Violet shook her head slightly and shot a look at her daughter in law. "This is your moment after all."

"I was sure you enjoyed being the centre of attention." Edith cut in. "Soon you'll be all alone in your big London house, just as you've always wanted."

"Oh do shut up." Mary snapped back, too tried to rise above her sisters baiting.

"Edith, you might try to be supportive." Sybil interjected. "Mary is bound to be nervous, I know I would be."

"I am not nervous."

"Of course not." Edith gave a high laugh. "Why would you be? You will do whatever it is you want to. I wouldn't be surprised if you leave him at the altar!"

"That is enough!" Cora hissed. "She would do no such thing." The very thought struck fear into her heart.

She would do no such thing. She felt a kind of reckless abandon threatening to impinge on the edge of her consciousness. During dinner she had avoided looking at Matthew, who too seemed as if he wished to be somewhere else. She felt that if she looked at him he would surely know the truth. He would not be able to stay for the wedding, he told them, he would travel to London the following morning to spend the rest of his leave with his wife. This was her last chance, she must do this now or risk sending him away never knowing, she must purge her soul and damn the consequences. She had everything to lose and nothing to gain but with this came a certain freedom, ruined but released. _Please, release me._

She excused herself from the drawing room and made as if to bed, Anna caught her as she entered the library.

"Shall I prepare you for bed, m'Lady?"

"No, Anna." She replied, her voice, tight. "There is something I must do first, you might find a reason to make Captain Crawley come to the library."

"I'm sure I can think of something, are you going to... tell him, m'Lady?" The maid asked.

"I must, I cannot live with my conscience, is that very selfish?"

"I think you should listen to your heart." Anna replied, with a smile.

December, 1939.

I found you sitting on the jetty overlooking the river, a long strip of reed in your hands. It was unseasonably warm and you wore short trousers and a white shirt that was dirty around the cuffs. You had been missing for over two hours and a rising panic had coursed through the house, nanny was wringing her hands and weeping inconsolably, earning herself a number of firm words from Carson who organized the search party. Papa had called the police which I suspected was an over reaction, but I was so absorbed by a sick feeling of dread that it was all I could do to set off in search myself. After fifteen minutes of calling your name and violating all your secret hiding places I was on the verge of breaking down when I saw you.

"Teddy!" I exhaled, the relief intense and complete.

You did not turn around and I knelt down next to you. You had been crying and your face was grimy and tear stained.

"Oh, Teddy." I hugged your little body close and you yielded slightly. "Everyone is looking for you, we were so worried."

"Is Papa looking for me?" You asked, turning your face to mine and my heart sank.

"No, darling."

"Oh." You said. "I thought he might come to find me." And you kicked your legs, looking down into the dark water.

It had been three weeks since Richard's death.

I once found you awake, well past midnight, your nurse sleeping deeply and snoring loudly as you stood at the curtains; your face peeking through whilst your body remained shrouded in material. I didn't wish to startle you so approached quietly and waited. I can see you there now in your blue waffle pajamas, little bare feet pressed together as you looked out into the street outside. I thought perhaps you had seen a cat or a feral urban fox and were tracking it's progress from your vantage point. I was poised to clear my throat and alert you to my presence when I noticed a piece of paper on the floor behind you. Silently I reached down to pick it up, it was a drawing, the meaning of which it was rather hard to decipher. Possibly a horse or even a dog. Isis? What was clear was the shaky script across the top of the paper. For Papa.

I replaced the paper and retreated from the room. I stood outside the door and took a steadying breath, my heart ached for you. I couldn't bring myself to ease you from the window and put you back to bed so I returned to my own room. I sat on the edge of the bed for what seemed an interminable length of time before peeking around your bedroom door once more. You were asleep on the floor, your bottom in the air, your arms tucked underneath your chest. I lifted you up into bed with some difficulty for you were heavy with slumber, crumpled underneath you lay the drawing and I smoothed it with my hands. I took it with me because I wanted you to think he had kissed you goodnight and found it. I looked at your confused little face that day by the water and I was so ashamed to think of that picture folded into a drawer in my dressing table.

"Teddy, Papa isn't going to come back." I steeled myself. "He has died."

Your legs stilled and you looked up at me, those eyes that were so blue, so captivating.

"He said he would take me to his office."

I could not imagine Richard saying that. _I have no interest in that child_ - were the words he had once uttered within your earshot - _No interest at all._

"I'm sure he intended to." I lied. "Now let us go tell Grandpapa to send the police away."

"The police!" Your face lit up as you took my hand. "Papa once asked a policeman to take off his hat so I could try it on." You said as you skipped along next to me, tears forgotten.

I wonder if you remember this incident, we never spoke of it afterwards. Was there a relationship there that I did not see, that was hidden? Or did you construct something in your five year old mind, something to cushion the rejection you obviously felt. Afterwards you would still occasionally mention him, always in a manner that suggested you expected him to return, and then it stopped and we never spoke of him again.

There was nothing to say. I underestimated how much it would affect you; I assumed you saw him as I did, an addition to our lives in name only. His death released me in a sense, but in every other way I remained bound.

I long for that little boy now, for that balmy afternoon when we walked back through the grounds hand in hand to a rapturous welcome.

December, 1917.

She did not turn on the lights and took a seat in the library. She trusted that Anna would find some subtle way to bring him here without arousing her father or Sir Richard's suspicions. This would be where it would end, she expected nothing from him except perhaps some absolution of guilt, some deflection of responsibility and suffering. She would be hurting him, again, after she had sworn she would not, but she had brought herself to the point where she simply must unburden her heart.

She saw him in the doorway before he was able to make her out sitting there in the dark.

"Mary?" He said, finally, squinting in surprise.

"Please shut the door."

He did as she asked and she turned on a small light on the table to illuminate something of the gloom.

"Anna said there was a telephone call for me."

"There is no telephone call." Her heart hammered relentlessly against her ribcage.

"I see." Matthew frowned. "So am I to take it that was a ruse to bring me here?"

"Please, sit down." She beckoned to the seat opposite her.

"This seems somewhat ominous, Mary." His voice not as light as he had intended.

"There is something I must tell you."

"Really?" He smiled cautiously and she envied the naivety she was about to shatter.

"I'm pregnant."

The words hung heavy in the air around them as a crushing silence prevailed. Once said, never to be re-summoned, gathered up hastily and stuffed away into some hidden place to be forgotten. Momentarily something was lifted only to be replaced by the sight of Matthew's expression, his face slack and colorless.

"Is that why you're marrying him?" His voice was dull and flat as he looked into her eyes.

She nodded.

"The child is mine?"

"Yes."

He stood and turned away from her, his hand covering his mouth. The stillness was suffocating and she felt a slow and pervasive panic spread hotly through her, an unpleasant tingling across her skin as she watched his still back and bowed head. What should occur now? Evidently she had seen no further than this point, groping blindly to reach this moment when surely some of the weight would be lifted. It was not; it doubled and spread, a gulf deepening between them.

"Matthew, please say something." She whispered.

He turned around slowly, his face blank.

"Don't hate me." She heard herself say.

"I could not hate you." He replied quietly.

"I am so sorry." Her voice cracked and she longed to reach out to him.

"I think I need to sit down." He lowered himself unsteadily back into the chair, gripping the arms tightly.

His head spun and he felt quite sick, everything he so tenuously clung to disintegrating around him in one short sentence.

"I planned to tell you, that night you came to dinner but then..." She struggled to say the words.

"I married Lavinia." He finished for her, self loathing pervading his very being. "What made you change your mind?"

She looked away.

"I could not let you be killed without knowing the truth."

"And what must I do with the truth?"

"There is nothing you can do."

He rose then and she thought he would surely walk away. _Do not look back._

"I must do something." And his voice was barely a whisper, the conflict in his heart visible in his agonized expression.

"Can you turn back the clock?" Mary replied, using a gloved hand to catch the stray tears that fell.

His own tears stung in the corners of his eyes then and he moved to close the gap between them.

"It depends on what it is you wish to change."

"I wish it had been our wedding night." She said after a pause, the color high in her cheeks.

"Oh, Mary." He said sadly, shutting his eyes for a moment.

She stood, smoothing a crease from the front of her gown, not willing to look at him as a sob clawed through her, tearing and ripping a weary path.

"Good night."

She made to leave but felt a hand clasp hers. She turned back to face him.

"It is too late." She whispered.


	4. Chapter 4

__A/N: Hard as it may be to believe I have just figured out how to pop a little authors note in, I am quite simple clearly. I want to say thank you so so much to everyone who has reviewed/favourited or read, you spur me on. A huge special thank you to Ariadne, my fabulous beta, without whom I would find it very hard to keep up my momentum, you are an angel. Anyway I hope you all enjoy this part, things are getting tough!__

* * *

><p><em>But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.<em>

December, 1917.

Mary could not breathe and she did not trust herself to stay in the room with him, she could not bear to see the tormented expression etched across his features a moment longer. She walked straight past a confused Carson and pulled open the front door. He called after her in concern as she stepped into the bitterly cold night in her flimsy evening gown. She continued to walk, the gravel crunching beneath her feet as an opaque darkness stared back at her. The cold pinched her skin and she felt her teeth begin to chatter, the chill took away what remaining breath she had and she felt herself gasping for air but she could not turn around.

"My Lady!" Carson called, leaving the front door open and going after her.

He caught up to her and removed his own jacket, placing it over her shoulders as he looked into her pale face.

"What are you doing, my lady?" He asked, kindly. "Please, come back inside."

She allowed him to gently turn her around so the beacon of light shining from the door to the house filled her eyes. Outlined in the entrance hall Matthew stood, his face bathed in shadow as behind him her father and Richard stepped forwards.

"Mary!" Robert called, moving past Matthew to take her arm from Carson. "Where in God's name are you going? You'll catch your death, come inside at once!"

He looked in concern at his daughter as she allowed him to lead her back inside.

"Carson, send for Anna," he instructed, touching Mary's cold cheek, his brow lined.

"Mary?" Cora and the other women were exiting the drawing room and her mother moved swiftly towards her, taking her other arm. "Are you ill?"

"I think we should send for Clarkson," her husband said, beckoning once more to Carson.

"No," Mary managed, spurred from her daze. "I'm quite alright, I wanted some fresh air, I didn't realize it was so cold."

Looks were exchanged amongst those assembled, an awkward silence swelling the air.

"Well I think I will have the motor, thank you, Carson. I do not intend to risk frost bite," the Dowager Countess declared.

Matthew could not take his eyes from her and if they noticed he did not care. The throng dispersed and Mary disappeared up the stairs flanked by her mother and Anna. She did not look back, he didn't expect her to. His hands were clenched at his sides and when he caught Richard's gaze traveling down to his fists he released them quickly. The other man looked up and caught his eye, a small humorless smile spread along the older man's mouth and he raised his eyebrows.

"I'm going to check on the men, Matthew, I shall meet you at home."

"Very good, mother," he nodded briefly at her as out of the corner of his eye he saw that Richard was still watching him.

"I shall finish my port," Robert declared. "You are both welcome to join me," he said, his face troubled as he returned to the dining room leaving the other two men alone in the hall.

"I think I will walk back to Crawley house."

"Yes perhaps that would be best," Richard surveyed him, the indecipherable expression remaining on his face. "I think that is quite enough excitement for one night."

"What do you mean by that?" he responded sharply.

He did not remove his gaze and they stood silently for several seconds.

"I'm sure you need time to recover before you join your sweet little wife in London."

"I don't care for your tone," Matthew gritted his teeth, his throat tight and uncomfortable.

Richard leaned in so his lips were inches from Matthew's ear.

"And I'm sure I will not care for your little bastard but we all have our crosses to bear," he whispered.

Matthew's heart lurched and a strange heat filled his head, he felt as if he had stepped outside of himself and there was no feeling in his hands as he seized Richard by his lapels and forced him back into the wall. He had never experienced the phenomena of seeing red but everything in front of him was quickly bathed in scarlet, in the blood of thousands. His face contorted in anger and the two men stood suspended in time, nose to nose. Richard did not fight back, he had been thrown off balance but no matter, the power was his, a mere physical display of aggression was not going to usurp that.

"My my," he chided. "I think you must control your temper, Cousin Matthew or I just don't know what I may be compelled to do."

"If you touch her…" Matthew spat and he did not feel in control as his hand moved to close around the other man's throat.

"Oh, I'll do more than touch her," he hissed back and this time he reached up to take hold of his assailants arm, they struggled for a moment until Richard regained some control. "You will leave and I will marry her, or the whole world will know what a slut Lady Mary Crawley really is. Did you think you were the first?"

Matthew felt his grip loosen.

"Of course you did but it only took a telephone call for me to find out about the Turkish attaché who died in her bed! You should be grateful that I will take her because nobody else will!"

Matthew retreated for a moment, as if winded, sweat standing out on his brow.

"Leave now," Richard said, straightening his bow tie. "Or I will not guarantee to keep her from harm."

* * *

><p>April, 1940.<p>

I cannot speak of the horror here. It is cruel, bloody and there is no reprieve. I can only think of home, of Yorkshire. As heavy fire rains down and all seems hopeless I think of my family, and I think about life and what it has meant to me thus far. I must remember, I cannot live solely in this hell as my comrades fall around me; as it becomes clearer that our situation is desperate. A piece of me remains with every man that falls in the mud, a part of my soul that I will never recover, that will fester in France decomposing beyond recognition. I do not know what will be left of me if I return.

I have seen death, I have felt acute personal loss, but it has not prepared me for this mindless extinguishing of life. One man here, Jack, told me he would rather die than live out the war, burdening his mother with uncertainty, with a slow burning grief. His father died in the Somme. He asks so I tell him that my father survived, he nods and smiles sadly. I looked out for him, Jack, as if fate had brought me to him to prevent history repeating itself. I thought that perhaps I could bring him through with me, that he could survive to return to his mother. There is no poetry here, no intervention from God to provide recompense for the sins of the past. The world owed Jack, it owed him a father and a life and it took away both.

Jack asked me about my father, he hoped to hear of what it would have been like to have that secure bond. I could tell him only that sometimes knowing one is loved must be enough to replace everything else one might wish for. We cannot always love and be loved freely. I did not tell him that I often felt that I had lost a father twice. I could not share this indulgent thought with its taint of self pity.

He was the first father, the father I felt belonged to me without thought, an innate if distant belonging. I remember a little of him now and I remember his death. Being here I have found things visited upon me from the past that I had never recollected before. I remember his hat on the coat stand, the way it remained there, occupying it's space day after day. It bothered me; it should not have been there. It should be on his head. Eventually I took it, with the vague assertion that I would keep it for him until he needed it. Then, when the realization that he would not need it again dawned on me, I hid it at the top of a wardrobe. It smelt of his aftershave and I liked the way it looked on my head and felt in my hands.

I know so little. If I am to die I wish for closure, to complete a circle, to understand but I cannot - _Mama, I know_ - I told you as you took my hands and struggled for the words. You broke down then and there could be no questions, I could not see you suffer for my need to know why and how, to settle everything that had lurked unbidden in my mind for so long - _Let us say no more now - _As I climbed aboard the carriage and moved to adjust the window on the door, you waved and I looked away for a moment to compose myself. As I did so I saw him, pushing his way along the platform until he caught sight of you. He reached you and his eyes met mine, I stood and pushed down the window as far as it could go. I reached out my hand and he took it, squeezing tightly, his lips a straight pained line and a tear cutting a path down his face.

I felt your kiss burned to my cheek and in his eyes I saw the promise of all that was unsaid. I looked back out of the window as the train moved off and I saw him hold you close as you both raised your hands in farewell. I hope that it is not too late; that the pain and deceit that so many years have woven can be eased. I will not lay down to the final sleep here, there is much left to say.

* * *

><p>December, 1917.<p>

"Can you tell?" Mary asked, standing side on and looking in the mirror.

"No, m'Lady," Anna shook her head.

"You'll have to loosen the corset," she said, exhaling heavily and turning her back to the maid. "I can't breathe," a barely contained note of panic in her voice.

Anna unlaced the back of the corset, her fingers moving deftly and quickly as Mary struggled to take a steadying breath.

"I'm sorry, I need to sit down," she said, sinking onto the seat at the dressing table, her hands shaking. "I don't know how I'm going to make it through this day."

"You will," Anna said. "Because you have to," she added gently.

Mary closed her eyes, she must draw everything from her deepest reserves, maintain a mask that she could not let slip. This time tomorrow it would be over and then she would be ensconced in her gilded cage. She could not allow herself to feel nor to think, she must remain numb and in control. This moment must be the last glimpse of weakness, the beginning of the lie that would run through the rest of her life. She was becoming an accomplished if inconsistent actress, she would need to be. _Everyone walks down the aisle with half of the story untold_. Oh Granny if only you knew. A knock sounded on the door and her sisters and mother entered the room. Mary swallowed a wave of nausea and turned to smile at them.

"How are you?" Cora asked as Mary stood and allowed Anna to lace up the back of the bodice.

"I'm fine, Mama," she replied.

"This dress is just so beautiful," her mother said wistfully as Anna removed it from where it hung on the outside of the wardrobe.

Beautiful it was but it may as well have been a hair shirt. It fitted her perfectly and she let her mother and Sybil smooth and adjust it around her. It was so white, blindingly pure. Her mother was speaking about her own wedding day but Mary was not listening, the corset still felt too tight and she breathed in self consciously. She knew it did not show but she flinched minutely when Sybil's hand brushed the lace over her stomach. Edith was fussing with the skirt of her bridesmaid's dress and as she looked up she caught Mary's eye momentarily. They had sparred and sniped for as long as she could remember but with this Mary often felt as if Edith saw more of her, of what ran beneath the surface. Sybil had always been adoring and trusting of her eldest sister, and she drew the best from her. Edith and Mary had tried to destroy each other, summoned the darkest sides of their characters and today there was only darkness. Edith saw it in her sister's eyes.

They left her, the motor waiting to take them to the church. They each kissed her cheek and Mary frowned in surprise when Edith reached to squeeze her hand briefly. She managed a small smile in return.

"Can we send Papa in?" Cora asked.

"Of course."

Her father paused in the doorway, catching his breath as he saw her.

"You look beautiful, my darling," he smiled, taking her hands in his. "I am very proud."

_Oh do not be proud of me, Papa. You would hate me if you knew._

"I want only to tell you this," he cupped her cheek in his hand. "I will always be your most fervent protector and greatest advocate, never doubt that and I will not truly give you away."

_Not to him._ The words were unsaid but she felt them there in the air between them. _You must, Papa._

* * *

><p>He lay awake. He had barely slept since he had arrived in London. Lavinia was asleep beside him, the soft curve of her back outlined in shadow, her coppery hair loosely tied and splayed on the pillow. She had tried to kiss him, tentatively and gently but he could not formulate the appropriate response, his body was cold and unyielding. She breathed softly and evenly and he was suffocated by her presence. The wedding would be over now, the guests departing, the family stepping back and slipping away. She would be alone with him. Anger had been replaced by a deep pervading sickness, a harrowing guilt and an almost uncontrollable desperation. <em>I will do more than touch her.<em>He could not bear the thought of Carlisle's hands on her skin, his lips on hers. He closed his eyes and he was drawn back to an unnaturally humid day, to the way they fell into each others arms. He could not relive it, not now.

He had let her go, he had no choice. He was shocked by what Carlisle had told him and it cast a different light on the events of the years past but in reality it faded into insignificance. He did not care. She was carrying his child; it was as if a parallel world was mocking him, giving him a glimpse of what could have been whilst simultaneously withholding it from reach. He could not be sure that Carlisle would carry through his threat but if he did he was in no position to offer Mary protection, to shield her from the world that would close all doors to her. What kind of man was he? He did not know anymore, the honorable hero at the front, the middle class solicitor, the heir apparent. All of those things meant nothing if he were willing to leave her at the mercy of that man.

_We will always have this._

He doubted he would ever have forgotten but he would have continued to do what was right, hope he survived the war to build a life with Lavinia and wished only for Mary's happiness. Now whatever he did it would not be what was right, none of this was right, nothing could ever be right again; not without her.

_It is too late._


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: I just want to apologise for the lack of scene divisions in the first three chapters, I used an asterix and didn't realize it wouldn't show up, I hope this hasn't spoiled anyone's reading too much or put anyone off reading further. Anyway, here is part 5, your feedback is hugely appreciated._

* * *

><p><em>And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.<em>

April, 1940.

I received a letter from Louisa today. I smiled when I saw her elaborate script and her enthusiastic salutation across the top of the page. My darling, Teddy! She wrote of our childhoods, of the happiest of times; the thought of which warmed me even here.

We were constant companions during those hot, endless summers we spent together, you and Aunt Sybil taking tea on the lawn whilst we played. She could climb as high as I could, her knees scraped and bruised and her long dark hair tangled. I can see her looking down at me now from a higher branch, laughing and teasing; she was relentless. We conducted a marriage ceremony under an oak tree, her father's aging Bassett hound officiating in a stolen bow tie, Louisa's younger sister a reluctant bridesmaid. She kissed me shyly on the cheek and we were man and wife for the rest of the day, Isabella a petulant infant who refused to be fed or carried and kicked Louisa hard on the shins.

We laughed all the time, that day and on many others. She was more a sister than a cousin, bossy and persuasive, younger but able to force me to participate in all manner of games which my contemporaries would have frowned upon. I have always been comfortable with women, I grew up surrounded by them and when I went away to school I missed those relationships, with Louisa, my grandmother and my aunts. I missed you most of all and I would cry in my narrow bed, my mouth stuffed with a sheet incase the other boys in the dormitory heard.

I remember one wonderful occasion; it was a visiting weekend but you had telephoned to say you would be unable to come. I was angry and upset and refused to write the customary weekly letter to you that evening. When the morning came and the other parents began to arrive, I hid and sulked. I was sitting in the gap between a wardrobe and the wall in the sitting room when I heard one of the masters enter.

"I am sorry, Lady Grantham but I do not know where young Theodore could be."

"Teddy," I heard my great grandmother correct him. "Well Mr Douglas, I suggest you find him. Post haste."

It seemed an appropriate moment to reveal myself and I got up, pulling up my socks as I did so.

"Oh, there you are, Carlisle," Mr Douglas drawled.

A simpering smile was shot in the direction of Granny who merely raised an arched eyebrow and dismissed him with a small wave of her hand.

"Teddy," she beamed, her regal expression breaking into a smile as she kissed my cheek. "Your mother told me she could not be here so I had Evans bring me in the motor, with Louisa," she added with a wink.

I could barely contain my glee as we walked out to the car. Granny's stately presence drawing long glances from the assembled families congregating in the driveway. Louisa leapt down from the motor, her plaits in disarray, slightly awkward in her over starched pinafore. She flung herself against me in a bear hug which drew a small tut from Granny.

"Louisa, you have much to learn about being a lady," she said, not entirely seriously.

"Mama says I'm going to be more than a lady!"

"Yes, she would," Granny muttered, patting Louisa's arm fondly and gesticulating for us to climb into the car.

"Where are we going?" I asked eagerly.

She tapped the side of her nose with a gloved hand and smiled. I pressed my face to the window as we drove through the countryside, Louisa clutching my hand in hers in excited anticipation.

"I know that you like to climb trees," Granny said, with a slight note of sufferance as she glanced at my cousin. "I used to bring your grandfather here."

The car wove down a canopied lane, so narrow that the hedgerow brushed the wing mirrors on either side. Granny indicated for Evans to stop, no other car would be able to pass but she was supremely unconcerned. There was a stile immediately in front of us on the left side and she waved her fingers towards it. We climbed up eagerly and looked over into a magnificent wood, bathed in dappled light was a clearing, just beyond which towered a tree so intricate it took my breath away.

"Go on, I shall observe from a safe distance. And for goodness sake don't fall or I'll have your mothers to answer to."

Through the leaves, as we hung between the branches, we could see her, leaning against her cane, one elegant hand resting on the stile. We climbed to the pinnacle, encouraging each other and laughing nervously when we looked down and our legs turned to jelly. We could see across fields, farmhouses and animals in our line of sight and there in the distance; Downton. I thought of my grandfather but most I thought of the elderly lady watching us, indulging her great grandchildren and remembering the son she had outlived. When we returned to the car I noticed her lace handkerchief balled up in one of her hands, a redness at the rim of eyes that were cloudy with memory. She sat between us and we each took one of her hands, I felt her squeeze my fingers gently.

That day is an imprint in my mind, I can feel it and it's essence remains, even here in the very pit of hell.

* * *

><p>December, 1917.<p>

"I think we do right, waiting until the morning to leave for London," he sat on the trunk at the end of the bed and removed his shoes. "Although spending my wedding night in your parents house is not what I would ideally desire."

"I'm very tired," Mary declared, pulling her dressing gown more closely around her.

"I'm sure you are," he replied, getting up and moving towards her.

"The bed is made up through there," she said, nodding to the adjoining room, swallowing the lump in her throat as his eyes met hers, unwavering.

"It may be considered 'proper' for couples to sleep apart but I dare say I don't care for the idea."

The gap closed between them and she fought the urge to bolt for the door.

"Do you think me a very great fool?" he asked, his voice so soft it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Mary shook her head, her arms folded tightly across her chest, her jaw set.

"I'm not sure what you mean."

He kissed her then and when she withdrew he took hold of her tightly around the upper arm.

"I can only be grateful that you won't have much to learn."

This time she tugged her arm from his grasp and stepped away from him. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears and a sickening clarity settled over her as she stood in that beautiful room, in the home that had been the life blood of her family.

"You know," she breathed the statement, of course he knew.

"You will find that there is nothing you can hide from me," he walked towards her so that she was backed against the wall, the fabric of her night gown catching on the paneling. "I suggest you do everything in your power to ensure my satisfaction with this arrangement, or you can bid farewell to the life you are so accustomed to."

"And if I won't," she risked, tilting her chin up slightly.

"You will," Richard replied. "You are trapped, my dear. Now come to bed."

* * *

><p>New Years Eve, 1917.<p>

The house rang with noise as life burst forth at the seams, those soldiers who were well enough mingling with the other guests as drinks circulated the party. Omnipresent in the air, clinging to the expressions of all those present were thoughts of those who were not there. The pale ghosts around the edges of the room, the voices of the fallen, clinging to the edge of a new year; the year this war would surely end. _Our boys at the front. Bring them home. Bring him home. _

"I enjoy a party but one that requires so much 'mixing' is rather tiring to the nerves," Violet declared, seating herself beside Mary, her lips twitching as a near by soldier drained his glass lustily.

"I think everyone is enjoying themselves."

"Indeed, everyone besides you, my dear."

"I'm quite alright, Granny," Mary replied, forcing a small smile.

"Oh, it seems the moment is fast approaching," Violet nodded to the clock. "I never know quite how to react to such outpourings of enthusiasm."

Violet and Mary rose, Richard crossing the room to stand at her side, his arm around her waist. Robert raised his glass in the air and cleared his throat, Cora at his side, as silence fell.

"Family, friends and comrades, let us raise our glasses. Let us toast this new year and think of those who fight and defend, who protect our freedom. May God protect them and may God save the King!"

A cry of agreement went up around the room as the clock struck midnight. She turned her face and allowed him to kiss her cheek; he took her arm and stepped into the centre of the room, waiting for the initial euphoria to die down. A jerky silence prevailed as all eyes turned to him as he raised his glass once more. Mary froze, color flooding her cheeks as her eyes fell to the floor under the questioning gaze of her parents.

"I hope you will excuse me but I wish to make an announcement," an expectant pause settled. "My wife and I are to become parents."

The assembled throng directed their gaze between the couple and Robert and Cora, both of whom were standing extremely still. The champagne was running down the side of Cora's glass as she held it at an unnatural tilt, her mouth open. Her husband recovered himself first but his eyes were glazed, his voice gruff as he returned the toast to the silent room.

"To new hope," he replied.

* * *

><p>"How dare you!" Cora said, turning on them, the sounds of revelry filtering through into the library. "How dare you embarrass us like that? In our own home." Her eyes flashed but Mary could not meet them.<p>

"Well?" Robert demanded.

"It certainly was not my intention to embarrass you Lady Grantham," Richard replied, unabashed.

"Really? Because I think that was precisely your intention. You have been married three weeks, three weeks! I am not a doctor but I imagine I and everyone else in that room have reached the same conclusion. I should knock you down!"

"Robert!" Cora placed a steadying hand on her husband's arm.

"I'm sorry you are upset," Richard replied, standing his ground.

"Upset!" he exploded, perspiration standing out on his face. "Mary? Have you nothing to say?"

She had seen that disappointment before and it crippled her.

"I'm sorry, Papa," her voice a hoarse whisper.

"On second thoughts I do not want to hear what you have to say, I do not want to listen to either of you," he turned away and Cora placed a comforting hand on his back, shooting Mary a look over her shoulder.

She could not begin to imagine what had possessed him, to choose that moment of all moments. She knew him well enough to know that it was not a sudden strike of fancy, an unguarded moment brought on by the general atmosphere of the evening. It was another subtle way of keeping her under his thrall, demonstrating where the balance of power lay and pushing her just far enough without letting her fall. He knew damn well how it would look, like a 'shotgun wedding', an American colloquialism her mother was fond of using in a superior manner, when deliberating on the reasons for the more peculiar society marriages. Mary could quite see her father fumbling with the lock to the shotgun cabinet in his current state but Richard seemed unfazed by the outbursts of her parents.

"Well I apologize if I misjudged the situation," Richard said, his tone measured. "But as we are indeed married, I hope you will not hold it against me."

"Hold it against you?" Robert boomed, turning around, a vein in the side of his forehead pulsing.

"I think we all need to calm down," Cora said, her voice sharp and barely contained. "If you will please leave us."

"Of course," he offered them a faintly deferential nod but Robert turned away again in disgust.

He took her arm and guided her from the room, letting the door click shut behind them. As soon as they were out of sight of the remaining soldiers milling around in the hallway, Mary released herself from his grasp, her chest ached. She looked silently at him, regarding him for a moment, her captor.

"You people do not like to be the subject of scurrilous gossip, do you? I dread to imagine quite how your father would behave if he discovered the truth. His surrogate son, brave Cousin Matthew, behaving like a very naughty boy with his daughter and then, married to someone else! His responsibilities cast behind him," he smiled, warming to his theme. "A wanton disregard for duty and honor. I'm sure the betrayal would be unbearable."

"Have you quite finished?" she replied icily, something stirring inside her, he had enough of her, he would not create a void within her own family, in all she had left. "Do not think that you can disrupt this family, you have your prize, do not push your luck."

It was she who was pushing her luck and she knew it, but she would not be trodden into the ground, she would not let him treat her parents like this. Was it not enough for her to lose all that was true, to resign herself to a future of falsehoods in order to save face, to save the face of the family. He was reminding her of the ruin he could bring if she stepped out of line, of the heaped shame that would land from a great height. She had to hold onto something, to never let him think he had crushed her completely. His eyes narrowed and he leaned in close, one large hand wrapping around her wrist, a snake squeezing before unleashing its venom.

"My Lady?"

It was Carson and if he were about to speak Richard's words were silenced as he released her quickly and she exhaled, forcing a smile at the butler. Carson's eyes remained on Richard until he removed himself from Mary's immediate vicinity and applied a smile of his own.

"Have you enjoyed the celebrations, Carson?" he asked.

"Certainly."

Richard's lips twitched into a smirk at the simmering distaste barely hidden on the butler's face.

"Very good," he nodded, taking Mary's hand firmly. "And so to bed. Good night, Carson."

Mary looked over her shoulder as they walked away and mouthed a good night to the kind servant who had always kept a watchful eye on her welfare. His face was a mask of concern and she turned back. He had once told her that they were all rooting for her, how she wished someone would root for her now, inspire her with the strength to seek an escape that was currently elusive. She must not be foolish but surely this could not be all there would ever be, this power struggle, the constant reminder that all could be undone in a few words. The marbles scattered and the players left to scramble on the ground, retrieving the few precious mementoes of the past as the future broke into shards.

He was right. Matthew was dutiful and honorable but he had left, she had let him leave. Had she hoped he would stand firm, put up a fight? Secretly, in a hidden part of herself that was what she had yearned for, for him to do what she couldn't, be brave in the face of their sin. This was unfair, to expect him to absolve her, to remove the weight and bear it. It dug into the pit of her stomach to know that there was a moment that hung, a silvery spiders web of a moment, fragile in a morning frost. A moment when the path of fate could have twisted and converged, sweeping them down a road when this could have all been salvageable. The indiscernible threads broke, the link with that brief knot in time forever severed, to be replaced by this, this suffocating cobweb that choked and blinded.


	6. Chapter 6

_Her face is steadfast toward the shadowy land, for dim beyond it looms the light of day._

April, 1940

There is a portrait that hangs in the Great Hall, a beautiful oil painting that resides resplendent alongside those of generations of the Crawley family. It depicts you and your grandfather, he is dressed for hunting and you are wearing a woolen jacket and britches of the same design. I remember how you laughed and he tussled with you. The treasured grandson. I do not recall a moment when you were not smiling during that brief sitting. Of course, in the portrait itself you are both self contained in an ether of aristocratic composure, your small hand touching Isis and your face a mask of melancholy. Papa is austere and solid, no sense of the easy joy you brought to his demeanor. It is a beautiful piece of art but it captures nothing of you or he.

Soon after she took her place in the house, Lavinia had the portrait moved and hung in the library. I was not surprised, in recent years the awkward friendship we had struggled to maintain had begun to disintegrate, and I was almost certain that she knew. Mama and Granny were apoplectic and hastily the picture was returned. I pitied her. I saw the way she watched you at play, the tension in her face and hands. You have your father's eyes and much of his disposition but not so much as to make it glaringly obvious to the casual observer. There were those who looked more closely, for whom the unspoken secret loomed large.

My Grandmother was the most vibrant and complex woman I have known. She saw a great deal very clearly despite the weight of tradition and duty that had run through the whole of her long life. She once came to me when you and I were playing on the lawn behind the Dower House, you can have been only two or three years old, a ball of energy and vitality. She beckoned you to the chair and you came, a handful of grass in your grubby little hand. She gave your cheek an indulgent tweak and looked to me, a sage expression in those clear eyes.

"It is a wise child that knows his own father," she said, smoothing a stray twist of chestnut hair behind your ear, her eyes never leaving mine.

She never spoke of it again. My father and grandmother are long dead, my mother all that remains of the old guard. She writes and telephones frequently to beg me to return to Yorkshire, to stay with her in the Dower House. That I cannot do, if you do not return I will welcome the bombs to fall on London, I will come out to greet them. I have not seen or spoken to your father since the day you left but he did write to me. I slit the envelope open with a paper knife that once belonged to Richard, it caught the end of my finger, drawing droplets of ruby blood that I staunched between my lips. The taste clung there, metallic and sharp against my tongue as I read his words and cast my eyes over the small photograph that fell onto the desk.

It was you, as an infant, lying amongst silk and lace, your eyes watchful through the years. On the back is written, 'Teddy, October, 1918,' it is my handwriting but I do not know how Matthew came to be in possession of this photograph. I did not give it to him. My mouth was dry as I moved to read the enclosed piece of paper. _I have carried this photograph on my person for the past twenty one years. I have not spent a day without looking upon it. I can barely remember a time when I could not feel it between my fingers inside my pocket. I am lost without it and I am bereft without Teddy, return it to me only when we can be reunited with our son, and if that time can never come keep it and remember that I never forgot. Always, Matthew._I fingered the dog eared edges of the photograph, the soft corners and the layers that revealed themselves as it sought to fall apart in my hands.

* * *

><p>February, 1918.<p>

"Do you approve?"

"It's very grand," Mary replied, the empty house billowing around her. "As you know I would quite happily remain in London."

"I think you will change your mind when the baby's born, being close to your mother would surely be preferable."

"Perhaps," she turned to face Richard, her expression steady. "I thought you would seek to isolate me."

"I do not want you to be completely miserable," he said, looking up at the ornate ceiling.

"I suppose that is comforting," Mary responded quietly.

"As long as you keep your side of the bargain I will look after you, you can have a very comfortable life," his gaze, momentarily soft, hardened once more, and he gestured around the hall of the grand house. "The price you are paying for all of this is surely not so terribly high?"

She neither confirmed nor disagreed with a question she took to be rhetorical.

"Let us go to Downton, you can rest before dinner."

He took her arm as they walked down the magnificent marble staircase and she imagined what it would be like to throw herself down it, to lie broken at the bottom.

* * *

><p>There are moments when the world seems to cease to turn. When everything must surely stop being, when no words have yet been uttered but the expression of the person about to impart them speaks through every silent fibre. It was just such a moment. The family were gathered together in the drawing room, conducting the usual after dinner conversation, talk turning to the soldiers and the running of the house as a convalescent home. Isobel, Violet and Cora disagreeing over some trifling matter so that they barely noticed when Carson motioned Robert from the room. Mary stifled a yawn, exchanging a brief glance with Richard who gave her a smile of sufferance as he looked to the bickering women.<p>

"I think we shall retire, my dear?" he suggested. Moving to rise from his seat.

"Oh but Mary, we've hardly spoken since I heard your news," Isobel interjected, causing an arch expression from Violet at the sudden break in their conversation. "I was so surprised!"

"You weren't the only one," Edith muttered.

"No, well..." Cora started, shooting her daughter a look which requested a quick subject change.

"When can we expect the new arrival?" Isobel continued undeterred and oblivious to the discomfort around her.

"Summer," Mary said vaguely.

"Well how exciting for you all," she finished, finally glancing around at the muted responses of the other women.

The pregnant pause was broken by the door opening, and the room plummeted into a deeper silence as Robert stood before them. His face was ashen and a chill traversed the length of Mary's body, a wrenching dread settling over her. Richard had stood and the words hung unspoken in the air.

"What is it?" Isobel spoke finally, a tremble quaking in her voice.

"Molesley brought a telegram from the War Office. Matthew is missing in action," the words brought tears to his eyes as he held out his hands, palm up. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"No!" Mary said and Richard's hand settled on her shoulder.

"How much do they know?" Isobel swallowed, her fingers twisting in her lap.

"Mary, I think you should retire," Robert said, looking to Richard who nodded imperceptibly.

"No!" She objected, her chest heaving. "You must speak honestly to us all," she added as the pressure from his hand on her shoulder increased.

"It seems that most of Matthew's company were killed during an enemy attack, many are unaccounted for..." he swallowed. "We simply cannot know more details at this time."

"They don't know if he is among the dead? Well what about the injured?" Isobel demanded as Sybil reached to clasp her hand.

"There were no survivors but the dead do not number the entire company," Robert finished, his shoulders slumped.

"I must contact Lavinia, ensure she has also received a telegram," Isobel got up quickly from her seat.

"Let me come with you," Cora offered, giving Isobel's arm a gentle squeeze, the other woman nodded gratefully.

Mary covered her mouth with her hand as their voices echoed around her. How she stood she did not know. The next thing she remembered she was leaning against the wall in an empty corridor, her face pressed to the cool plaster, she could not cry. She did not react when he stood beside her and extended his hand.

"Come along, let me take you to bed," Richard extended his arm and she leaned against him numbly, his hand around her shoulder. "Perhaps it is for the best."

She recoiled from him but he held her fast, his face not unkind.

"You must move forward, or you will not survive this with your sanity intact. Let him go."

"You cannot expect me to do that."

"You are my wife, it is exactly what I expect."

* * *

><p>He woke suddenly, enveloped in darkness and took a moment to sift through the fog of sleep. His thoughts reconnected quickly as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, the other side of the bed was empty, she was gone. Richard sat upright, reaching to the end of the bed where his dressing gown lay, tugging it on and throwing back the sheets. He had expected to be called to deal with weeping; with renewed resistance to his presence but in fact after that moment in the corridor she had become possessed with a remarkable self control. Well, perhaps not so remarkable considering her past. To all intents and purposes it seemed that Matthew had perished which he found to be unsettling on a human level but altogether more convenient for him. He had not known the man except as an undoubtedly dangerous rival and could not mourn his death.<p>

Mary was another matter entirely, he wished to possess her and he was not prepared to lose her, certainly not to a dead man. He fancied that the sheer force of his determination could ultimately result in an arrangement that suited them both perfectly; he did not want to feel a ghost at his back. He recalled the fierce intensity in Matthew's eyes during their confrontation and for a split second thought he may have underestimated the man. But, no. No, he had quite perfectly guessed the measure of him, he was suitably ensnared by his new wife and neither had the gall or gumption to break free. Add to that his own thinly veiled threat and the stage was set, he had won, he always won. Yet somehow Richard felt his grip slipping, in death Matthew was drawing her back to him, whilst remaining the honorable, immortal hero.

He descended the stairs, giving the hall boy a brief nod. The boy indicated the library and Richard raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement. She was sitting by the dying remnants of the fire, the embers dissipating into the grate with an occasional hiss. The room was so cold. He made to pull the wrap tighter around himself but thought better of it. He removed it and placed it around her shoulders, she did not flinch, as if he had been standing in the room all along.

"You have your wish," she said, her eyes resting on the fireplace. "You are welcome to what is left of me."

When he followed her blank gaze he saw the photograph, shriveling and curling, blackening and fading from recognition. _Goodbye, Matthew._The best man won. His satisfaction was culled as she turned her face to him, those fine, exquisite features deadened by grief. What indeed was left?

"It is too cold in here, you'll make yourself ill," he said, finally.

"Do you care?" She asked.

"Yes, I care, I am not a monster."

"I'm sure you couldn't have come up with a better ending yourself," she replied, dully.

"Let this be our beginning."

She looked at him, a strange kind of pity fleeting across her brows.

"I cannot love you."

"I don't ask you to. As difficult to acknowledge as this is, remember that I am the one who has protected you. I could quite easily have thrown you over but I did not. Whatever there was between you, in the end, he let me have you."

It was so easy to say. Even whilst something uncomfortable tugged around his chest._ I will not guarantee to keep her from harm. _What choice had he left a man who was in no position to save her from shame, who could declare his love but would have to leave nonetheless, return to his wife whilst Mary became a pariah. Did a choice exist there? She did not know that; she need not know, not now.

"What do you mean?" She asked, he looked back at her and he did not hesitate.

"I mean that when I told him what I had found out about your past he realized he had made the right choice, choosing Lavinia."

"You're lying."

"He could hardly break his vow to her and well, the shock of my revelation was quite enough to make him see that, truly, one ill advised romp with you was not enough to warrant the dissolution of what will I'm sure be a happy marriage."

"You are a liar," she managed, although she felt as if she may be violently sick, the heavy hand of her suppressed thoughts pulling her under.

"Truth makes all things plain," he concluded.

He realized then that he would stop at little, that he would have her and keep her until there was no breath left in her body. He must maintain a careful grip as one does on a struggling bird, squeeze too hard and you will surely crush that delicate rib cage, constricting a heart that has little desire in continuing to beat. Perhaps he did feel a twinge of guilt. However, what was more cruel? Allowing her to pine for a dead hero or showing her a coward one might grow to forget?


	7. Chapter 7

_The Lord is known by the judgement which he executeth: the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands._

May, 1940.

I am twenty two years old tomorrow. Today I sit in the clothes I have worn for days, possibly even weeks, so cold it is all I can do to keep my teeth from shaking together inside my mouth. The mud above me is wet and a trickle drips down the collar of my coat. I am not alone in finding the night here the most torturous time. Deep into the darkness we sink, lining trenches with our guns at our sides. I have fired many bullets. We continue to hold the enemy off as behind us the passage of our escape is surely becoming more stenosed. Hope is leaving us here. Men have been lost, too many men. I do not know how much is known of our plight at home but I can only hope the propaganda machine works smoothly. I pray you do not know that the prognosis is dire. I don't want to die, Mama, but I fear I have as little control over the end as I did the beginning.

_If fate means you to lose, give him a good fight anyhow._Carson once quoted those words to me. I can hear his voice now, low and patient as he arranged the lapels on my woolen jacket. I can remember clearly the end of that last summer I spent in Downton before leaving for school. I can recall standing in front of the mirror, trying on my Every day dress, positioning the straw hat atop my head and adjusting it for the best effect. A boy. I felt very much a boy as my reflection stared back at me that day. I was affecting a pose befitting of a young gentlemen when Carson walked into the room and I blushed to the roots of my hair.

"I'm sorry, Master Teddy, I did not realize you were here."

"That's quite alright, Carson. I came here because I didn't want Grand-mamma to make a dreadful fuss when she saw me all kitted out, I want to get it right before I show her and Mama. I cannot seem to hide at the Dower House," I offered a sheepish smile.

"Are you looking forward to your new school?" he asked, ever the professional, retrying my silk tie into a more suitable knot.

"Oh, yes. That is, I suppose I do not want to let anyone down."

"How could you possibly let anyone down?" He blustered slightly, in an attempt to deflect my embarrassment.

"Well I must live up to expectations you see, Harrow is Grandpapa's school. I think I'm afraid that I may fail, that I may..." I paused, watching his face in the mirror. "Be disappointing," I looked away as his eyes softened. "There's Papa too, he would have expected me to be the very best, like he was. I must not fail, must I?"

No-one had ever told me how to lose, how to accept loss and I found that it was difficult to face. I think I do believe in fate, that we all have a part to play but that ultimately our choices will lead us to what was meant all along. Am I meant to die? Was this what I was born for? If that is so I can choose to go down fighting with dignity. The only way to face this is as if these are the final moments, if I think too much about what could have been the weight of it would cripple me. There is no tomorrow. You will think of me I know, wonder how I am spending my birthday. We have received no cards or letters for weeks so until today I had barely remembered. I am sure there is a card back logged somewhere, your elegant hand printing my name on a weathered envelope. Will he think of me tomorrow? Does he write letters that I have not received?

We have a great deal of time to think here. I try to find a way to fill in the gaps, the holes peppered through my mind, to justify actions never explained. I think of Lavinia too and much of her behaviour towards me over the years is clearer than ever. For in many ways she is like me, occupying a role in a drama she didn't always know was carrying on around her. She is a casualty and I find a great deal of sadness in that. Is that why you married Richard, to save her the pain, because I do not know if that was more cruel than merciful, Mama. She has lived with this too. Some secrets cannot be kept.

I do not want to find blame in what must have been an impossible situation. If anyone is to blame for the misery caused then surely, by default, it is me. Perhaps with another turn of fate things could have been different, I wonder if I am the personification of all that was lost. I certainly embody all that can never be. Does all that matter now? For some reason I find that it matters more than ever, now I do not know how much time I have to arrange it in my mind, or if I will ever have answers to my questions.

I examined my countenance in a piece of mirror this morning, on waking my face was numb on one side and I prodded it until feeling was restored. Marks from the dirt wall my head had lolled against cut into my cheek, etching scored lines into the flesh. There was something left of that thirteen year old boy in his straw hat looking back at me. What would I say to him now, as he departed for school? Afraid of failure, of shame. The Grandfatherly words of the butler in his ears. There is much worse to come? Or perhaps that all we can give is all of ourselves. I am giving everything to this, to making my life one worth creating. There must be a reason I am here, and if it is to die for King and country then so be it.

* * *

><p>February, 1918.<p>

Had he gone too far? This thought crossed his mind regularly through the days that followed. He seemed to be on a knife edge, events spiraling darkly around him. He found himself watching her constantly, unwilling to let her out of his sight. What was he afraid she would do? Run? Kill herself? Oh, God, he did not want that, the thought made him feel quite sick. He had not needed to say those things, clearly she had thought them anyway and with Matthew gone she would have little choice but to remain with him. He had not needed to rub salt into the wound but he had, for complete victory. It had not entered his mind that he might push her too far. Surely she would not do anything stupid. Although that was just it, he wasn't sure, he wasn't at all sure that she wouldn't.

He needed help, that much was clear, he couldn't be with her all the time, business in London and overseeing work on Hacksby kept him almost continuously occupied. He suspected neither of her sisters would be equal to the task so then the maid, Anna, yes she would do. He had caught her watching him occasionally and he fancied that she knew a great deal more than she let on. Perhaps she knew it all, he would have to test the water carefully. The moment came before dinner one evening and he was able to beckon her aside into an empty room.

"Anna, I wonder if I may speak candidly," he began.

"Of course, Sir Richard," she nodded.

"I am very concerned about Lady Mary, she has taken Captain Crawley's death hard."

"I thought he was missing, sir."

"Yes, quite. Missing, I do apologize. Nevertheless she is really quite upset," he proceeded cautiously.

"Yes, she is."

"I'm not certain she is in her right mind. I find myself anxious that she may do something... out of character," he paused. "Does that thought occur to you, Anna?"

"I think she is very upset," Anna reiterated, unwilling to be drawn.

"Yes. I suppose what I am asking is that you keep an especially careful eye on her and inform me of anything that might raise concern."

"If I became particularly worried I would be certain to inform someone, sir."

"I ask you to inform me," his expression was intense but the maid was not cowed and merely nodded politely.

Did she know? He was as sure as he could be that none of Mary's family knew the truth but he found it hard to believe she had confided in no-one, and of course the maid already guarded Mary's other great secret. It was something to have a loyal servant, he mused, someone to be trusted. If Anna told Mary of his concerns, which she surely would, then all to the good. _Cold comfort. She does not care for your concern. She loved Matthew. She loves him still._He could not control the human heart, try as he might. This would be easier if it weren't for the child, it was clouding Mary's mind, making her cling to that dead man. That was not all of it but it was a large part. There was nothing to be done about that now he supposed.

* * *

><p>"What does he imagine I plan to do?" Mary asked, her tone flat, disinterested.<p>

"I don't know m'Lady." Anna admitted, clearing away the crockery from the small table.

"Does he believe I intend to throw myself from an upstairs window?"

"He thinks you are not in your right mind."

"I'm not sure what my right mind is anymore," she replied.

"But you would never do anything like that."

A heavy silence hung in the air and the maid's activity ceased as she stopped to observe her mistresses expression, an uneasy feeling fluttering in her chest.

"No," Mary agreed, offering a small brief smile. "I would not do something like that."

"You have a great deal to live for," Anna said quietly.

"Do I?"

"Of course, your family, the baby..."

Mary shut her eyes and looked away. _Do not speak of it._She couldn't bear it.

"I said that if I were worried I would tell someone."

"You needn't worry about me, Anna."

"You put me in a difficult position, m'Lady," the maid replied.

"I do not deserve your loyalty but I have grown to rely on it," Mary stood. "I do not believe you would break my confidence."

"I wouldn't but I also would not stand by and do nothing if I thought you were in danger," Anna risked.

"Such a scenario will not arise. I think I will rest now," she said, fixing her maid with a gaze that indicated no further comment were to be given.

"Very good, m'Lady."

She had not cried, it had been days but the tears would not come. As she watched Lavinia sob against Isobel's shoulder she had found the cage around her own chest grow tighter. It was there, a great wave of grief and underneath it she was sinking, drowning. Why could she not cry when she were alone? When there was no facade to maintain, it was not natural. The pressure would build and then there would be nothing for it but to let it escape. _He is gone. There is nothing left._

She watched, she observed the atmosphere shift and pulse around her and took a limited part in it. A bystander to their desperation, a prisoner to her guilt. The key to her grief moved inside her, fluttering, the fragile beat of a butterfly's wings. There was something left, and it was all that was left of Matthew. She had sat in church that Sunday, beside Isobel, Lavinia too weak to attend. The older woman had taken her hand and held it tightly, and it was the closest Mary had come yet to tears as she withheld something that would comfort this woman when she most needed comforting.

* * *

><p>There was a light tap on the door. She had woken from her rest and was looking at a book, the same page swimming before her eyes. She shut it with a sigh and composed herself as the door opened.<p>

"Am I disturbing you?" Isobel asked, stepping into the room.

"No, not at all," Mary replied, beckoning to the chair opposite. "Please do sit down."

"How are you?"

"Fine, thank you," she said, thinking she had never seen Isobel look so old, so vulnerable; her spirit quite gone.

"And the baby? Does it move?"

Mary nodded, her chest tightening.

"It is such a special time, nurturing a new life. You must cherish it, all too soon they are grown... outside of your protection," she looked to the window. "I have something for you."

"Oh?" She breathed weakly.

"I was not sure if I should give it to you, if I should wait. I do not wish to upset you."

Mary held her breath as Isobel withdrew an envelope from her pocket.

"I received this just over a week ago but it is dated some weeks before. He asked that if anything happened I should give it to you, I do not know what it contains."

Mary took the envelope, felt its rough, stained surface between her finger tips. The other woman's eyes held hers and she was unable to look away.

"I know that you loved him once and that this is painful, you must not be afraid to grieve, Mary."

She was afraid, she was so afraid of a pain too deep to face. She made to speak but they were interrupted by a brief knock as Richard let himself into the room, pausing in the door way as he saw Isobel.

"I will leave you in peace," she got up hastily, a handkerchief at her eyes.

Richard gave her a polite nod and held open the door, his face quickly returning to Mary's as she made to push the envelope into the pocket of her gown. Too late, he had seen. As the door shut Mary felt her forehead burn, her hand closing around the letter so that it were almost in a ball.

"What is that?" He asked.

"A letter."

"I can see that. Who is it from?" The flash in his eyes belied the level tone he spoke in.

She did not reply.

"I am sure I hardly need ask, a note from beyond the grave?" He took a step towards her. "Do not upset yourself. Give it to me."

"No." A single word.

"No? Oh, I see, you believe this letter will prove me a liar."

"I know you to be a liar," she spat.

He would not tolerate this, no, she would not make a fool of him. He acted quickly and she was taken by surprise as he grabbed her wrist and pulled her hard towards him, using his other hand to rip the letter from her grasp. She resisted and he did not know where to stop. He did not feel his self control desert him, it happened so quickly he did not have time to acknowledge it. He flung the envelope behind him and took her other wrist, he shook her hard and she struggled. He hung onto the edge, a darkness lay beneath him. He pushed her and the blackness consumed him. A resounding bang reverberated through the room as she hit the wardrobe and fell to the floor. He could not control the human heart.


	8. Chapter 8

_A/N: Thank you so so much for all those who have favourited/alerted or reviewed. I hope you're enjoying reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it. This is probably the chapter I've worked the hardest on so far so any feedback very much appreciated. Special thanks to my long suffering beta, Ariadne, who is a diamond._

* * *

><p><em>The old lie; Dulce et decorum est, Pro patria mori.<em>

May, 1940

_Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of your only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen._

I stayed behind, Lavinia made to take my arm but I was unable to move. She stared at me, embarrassed, but I just shook my head as the rest of the row filed out past me. I lent my forearms against the pew in front and bent my head. I could not help myself and began to cry, silent, hot tears slipping down my cheeks. Across the nation, in churches and synagogues, our King has called on us to pray, pray for our boys in France. You do not need an inside ear to the military to surmise what this must mean, that a great tragedy is unfurling before our eyes, a thin veil between what the public imagine and what they know. I do not need to imagine. My role as Lord Lieutenant offers certain privileges, and I know as much as it is possible to know. I know that you are holding the line to allow the troops to withdraw to Dunkirk to await deliverance. Belated letters will not reach you now.

_If God can save but one man, let it be my son_; the silent words whispered within every father's prayer. I do not deserve my prayers to be answered but you do not deserve to die. I have battled with myself over whether I should share what I know with your mother but I simply cannot do it, if she is still able to hope I can't steal that sliver of comfort away. My head sunk lower until my forehead rested on the unforgiving wood. I heard a light footfall nearby and your grandmother slipped into the seat beside me, the church hollow and empty as the congregation made their way home. I felt her hand on my shoulder and when I looked up she smiled through her tears.

"Have you word of Teddy?" She whispered.

I shook my head and felt my face crumple.

"Oh," her voice broke and she looked down. "I can't bear to think of him, I can't look at his photograph without crying."

I took her hand and squeezed it.

"I have begged Mary to come home, we should all be together. I simply do not understand why she stays away," she dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.

"I think it is too painful."

"To be here, with her family? Why?"

"I don't think I can talk about this now, Cousin Cora. I'm sorry."

She caught my eye and held my gaze steadily, her hand clutching mine slightly tighter.

"No. I don't think I'm ready to hear, my dear."

She kissed my cheek and smoothed a tear from my eyes before reaching for her cane. I think of my own mother and my throat tightens further still, of how I denied her the opportunity to be a grandmother. I blame myself, I blame myself for it all, Teddy. I can argue that it was a different time, that the world was brutal to those who erred, that the price was too high; it should not have mattered. You are what matters, you should always have been all that mattered. I cannot turn back the clock and if I have missed my chance it is no more than I deserve.

"Matthew?"

I turn around and my wife is waiting in the aisle, her face pinched, all the compassion of that young girl long gone.

"People are going to wonder what you are doing, the luncheon will spoil."

"They are quite free to wonder, I am not ready to come, go ahead and start without me."

"How will that look?" She demands, and I am so very sorry then for what I have done to her.

"I imagine it will look odd," I reply and her forehead creases with anxiety as I continue. "But I can't pretend."

"You've pretended for twenty two years!"

As she ran, crying, from the chapel I felt the sensation that it was over, it was all over. Whether you return or not I cannot live with these lies anymore, I will not betray you again. A combination of relief and a deep stagnant grief filled me, welled up inside my heart and overflowed. It coursed through my veins, black and viscous, determined in its intent. It had happened before, there had been moments in time when I had felt I could bear it no longer but events had quickly plummeted from my control and I had slipped further out into the water. This time, when it was more than likely too late, I was buoyed and the tide was receding. I have always loved you, Teddy, always but I can see no reason for you to believe that to be true. I close my eyes and find I cannot see your face.

I am haunted. I am haunted by the moment she turned away - _It is too late_ - and as the years wove their insidious strands through our lives we were cursed at every turn. I cannot face the ultimate punishment. _Dear Lord, forgive me, spare my son._

* * *

><p>February, 1918<p>

She turned her head away from him as he stood at the edge of the room whilst her sisters and mother sat around the bed. Only an hour earlier he had left her on the floor, doubled over in pain, shutting the door firmly behind him before striding off down the corridor. He had lost control, of her, of the situation, of himself; it must not happen again. Sweat still clung around his hairline, a vein pulsing rapidly in the side of his neck as he clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides. He was angry with himself but what else could a man do, when he was so openly defied? Still it was terribly wrong and an unpleasant hot guilt spread around his collar. He did not want to hurt her, if she would only respect him, demonstrate some small measure of gratitude. He did not ask for much.

"You must be more careful, Mary," Cora implored. "Thank God no damage seems to have been done."

"Well, as Dr Clarkson said you should remain on complete bed rest, don't do a thing," Sybil added.

"My day wasn't exactly full before, am I to spend the next three months in bed?" Mary replied.

"Oh my dear, take nothing for granted," Cora clutched her hand in both of hers. "I could not bear for you to suffer as I have."

"You're right, Mama, I'm sorry," she glanced quickly at Richard. "I will be more careful."

"You must rest."

Her mother released her hand and the women stood, as she passed him Cora touched Richard's arm and smiled before letting the door shut between them.

"Get out."

Mary looked him straight in the eye and he did as he was bade. As soon as he was gone she let out a great shuddering sigh, covering her mouth with her hand. Tender red marks that would later become bruises were encircling her wrists and her back ached from the force of her landing against the wardrobe. The strength of the impact had winded her and she had lost all breath, gasping for air, panic spreading through her as she felt she would suffocate. Then, when she had taken what felt like a first breath of air into her lungs, her hands flew to her stomach and she felt a small firm movement, as if in reply. _I am here._ She cried, finally she cried. _Thank you, God._

It fell around her, crashing its great weight through her heart. She cried for Matthew. _The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away._ Whatever God there was had seemed deaf to her pleas but if she could keep her child then what more could she ask for of life? Matthew's child. She sobbed into the pillow, allowing the blessed relief to consume her, the agony to embrace her heart as she pressed her hands to her abdomen. _Matthew._She repeated his name into the pillow case through clenched teeth, nobody to hear, no-one to see. The most peace she could hope for.

* * *

><p>May, 1940<p>

I hear little above the rattle of guns, the cries, the roars of those around me. The force of each explosion rocking us to the core as we fight back, as if blind; surging forwards. Going over the top to the land of no return. There is nothing in my mind but my heart is full and I feel as if I have reached the close. The other side awaits us all here and from the corner of my eye I see one of my men fall, soundlessly amid the cacophony, I do not even see his face. I reach down, bowing my head and extending my arm, grabbing him underneath his armpit with a strength I did not know I had.

He is shouting, my face so close to his as his weight pulls me nearer the mud. I have never seen such fear. He vomits then and it is blood, blood and mucus spewing from cracked lips and all I can see is red. I pull him closer so we are chest to chest and I can smell bile, his eyes are rolled back inside his head but he is not dead. I can feel his body shaking against mine as I struggle to hold him and my gun. _Drop him, Teddy._But I cannot.

I fancied I heard it above all else, the individual bullet as it sliced through the air, my name carved into its jacket. _Theodore Arthur Robert. _Your time has come. Your number is up. The explosion that followed seemed as if it were inside my own head and I felt the most tremendous ripping sensation across my back as if my very organs had been torn through my ribs. How soft the ground felt. What peace came then as I shut my eyes.

I was a small boy outside a dark room in a dim corridor. One small hand tracing the intricacies of the carved doorframe. There are voices, quiet voices. I can smell death. I hear it, it steals around my neck, sharp fingers against skin so thin. _Grandpapa is dying._ Someone calls me inside, it is Mama, ushering me to the bedside. I am afraid. He looks small, shrunken against the pillow, the giant that towered benevolently over me beaten - _leave me alone with the boy _- his voice slurred but I am reassured, he is still here. They go, Mama and the others. He reaches out and his hand is cool and papery against my cheek.

He beckons me to him with the index finger of the same hand and I crawl up onto the bed and lie beside him, my head resting against his chest as he strokes my hair. He makes a strange noise and when I push myself up on my elbow to see his face, it is the face of the soldier lying in the mud near to where I fell. I am no longer here, I do not know where I am but the pain is gone. _Give a good fight, Teddy bear._ _Teddy bear._ Who is that? Who is calling me that? I do not see him but I feel him near, I feel that hat between my fingers once more, I can smell his aftershave. _Come along, Teddy bear._ A smile. I think he is cruel to you, Mama, but Papa loves me so. _Keep that little bastard away from me. Papa!_

_Do not take me. Leave me here, Mama needs me. Lay me down on the beach._

* * *

><p>I wake. I am not dead. No heaven would look like this - <em>He's awake! Sir, you were hit! He can't hear you. He isn't going to make it. We won't get him onto the boat in time <em>- I am floating and I am breathing but it feels as if I'm not. I try to speak but no words form and my eyes do not see clearly. _Morphine!_ Yes, please, more of that. I can smell the sea. It is dark here and noisy, other men, moaning, some laughing. I hear the clink of a bottle. A face looms over me, do I recognize it? - _Mama?_ _You may well ask for your mother Sonny Jim - _A red cross on his helmet and he puts something into my mouth. I am wet, I am wet all over. No, my back is wet. Where are my arms? I see two hands before my eyes, they are mine.

"You've got all your limbs, sir, settle down. Just a bloody great bullet and a ton of shrapnel in your back" The man is clearer now, a medic, yes it is all much clearer. "We're evacuating, we'll get you on a boat as quick as we can, you might still kiss your mother yet."

I am very cold.

"He ain't going to make it," someone says. "He's lost more blood than a bull."

"Pipe down, you. Talk like that isn't helping anyone."

"They'll start bombing again soon, hit us next time no doubt."

"Shut up, man!"

_Have some faith._

"Once we get on that boat we're not home and dry, they'll bomb us to hell. I can't swim and our Captain here will sink like a stone."

I hear scuffling, the rough movement of boots rocking whatever we are in. An ambulance surely. Then sobbing, great sobs like a child. _Oh to cry. I hope I have been brave. _I hear planes, unmistakably guttering overhead. That man is right. I brace myself for the onslaught, perhaps I will not feel it when it comes.

"There!" A man shouts triumphantly in the lull following the explosion. "If we hear it they've missed us! Now pull yourself together! You! Go to the field hospital and fetch more albumin."

_No man left behind._ I do not want to shut my eyes though they sting and burn. A hand holds mine, I cannot turn my head to see their face. _Will you find me here, Mama, do you know where to look? _The ceiling above me moves in waves, swelling and diminishing, rolling before my eyes. So close as if to smother me, covering my mouth so I do not scream. My heart beats still. You hold my hand. You smile and kiss my forehead. Oh Mama, I have fought, I have fought hard but I am so tired now. I cannot swim, the water here is deep and they mean us to sink. _You have a little left, my darling._

It feels like the moment that you are under water and you cannot possibly hold your breath any longer, when you feel as if your lungs will explode. Edward Turner, that was his name, yes, the boy who held me under in the river at the end of the rugby field. My ears are full of the chanting, the jeering of the boys lining the bank as we surged up and down in that impossibly thick water, grappling for the other's head or shoulders. Something thick and slimy wound like ribbons around my legs and I wanted nothing more than to scramble back up the bank, the mud streaking down my knees. Turner was an unpleasant boy – _I'd neck your mother, Carlisle – _he was very small, unusually small but with sinewy arms peculiar in an eleven year old. I can feel the force of his hand on the top of my head now pushing me down.

I remember why I pushed him into the river, he had turned to me, mid pond dip, and smiled – _my mother says that your mother shot your father, that she splattered his brains _– I did not think and I shoved him. I do not know how long we fought before he got the better of me. The water filled my mouth; stagnant and putrid and a darkness approached. I heard the shots, they rattled around my head once more, again and again. I was five years old, the collar of my tweed jacket itching on the back of my neck. It was there, the memory was there as I began to drown but I was unable to retrieve it, unable to gain purchase on its shadowy form. It comes to me in whispers now and the hands that I see when I look down are small, child's hands, wrapped around the shot-gun given to me by my grandfather. I can smell the trees, the damp, the death. A pheasant lies near my feet, one glassy eye rolled up to me.

I am face down in the mud once more, I am not a boy, I am a man; a soldier. I am an instrument of fate.

* * *

><p>February, 1918<p>

Cora slipped into the room soundlessly, gathering the skirt of her gown as she sat on the edge of the bed. She listened to the soft rise and fall of her daughter's breathing, reaching out and smoothing the side of her hair. Her fingers shook, it had been a most difficult week, unbearable at times and this day had certainly been the pinnacle. Matthew missing, likely dead and now this. She sighed, _oh Mary_. She had been angry but most of all embarrassed, she was ashamed to think that now, about how she had raged after Richard's announcement at the party. Robert was furious, she despairing as they bemoaned the gossip, the aspersions cast on their good name. Of course she knew this would only add fuel to a fire that had ignited years ago when a Turk had died under their roof. The loose morals of the Earl of Grantham's eldest daughter once more the talk of London. The audacity of it! Robert had exclaimed - have we not raised her better? Apparently not.

They were married, that was all that mattered now and the thought of losing her grandchild had struck fear into her heart. It was done and they must learn to tolerate a man at turns vulgar and flawlessly charming. She loved Mary but she did not understand her, contrary to what she had said at the time she had long ago forgiven her daughter's previous indiscretion. The loss of her unborn son had served to remind her of the perils of taking for granted that which is not promised. She had been soothed by the hope that Mary would marry Matthew and both her home and her money would pass safely to her grandson. It was not to be and now it seemed they had lost not one son, but two. In some ways she thought perhaps she blamed Mary, if only she had done as she were told, it could have been Matthew's child she now carried and their future would be secure. _Selfish, very selfish, Cora_, she chided herself. _Be thankful._

_My stubborn, beautiful girl._Cora reached out to take Mary's hand, limp in sleep, and turned it over to stroke her palm as she had when she was a child. She frowned, leaning back so the shadow fell away and Mary's wrist was better illuminated by the dim light. A red and violet bruise swelled unmistakably, encircling the pale skin, the marks of pressure from what looked like fingers clearly visible. Silently she reached across to examine her other wrist only to find an identical set of marks. A slow dread settled over her and she raised her hand to her mouth.

Anger swelled in her breast. _He had done this._ She would not tolerate it, she would not! Matters between a man and wife should remain private, she could hear her father now, his easy tolerance for the men who routinely and covertly beat their wives. _Turn a blind eye_, and over the years she had, but when it came to her daughter she most certainly would not. Everyone was still downstairs after dinner, she would return to her room to compose herself then she would confront him, cast him out! With a last look at her sleeping eldest child, Cora left the room.

As she swept down the corridor her step faltered. _Robert._She could not keep a secret from him again, no, she would speak to her husband first. He would be incandescent, she shuddered. He had never laid a finger on her with violence, never but never, and he would never condone such behaviour as her father would have. When she opened the door to the room she blinked in surprise to see Robert standing there in his dressing gown.

"My darling," he said. He looked tired, his eyes hollow with grief. "I had a terrible headache, I'm afraid I had to retire early."

"And the others?"

"Mama and the girls are taking coffee and Richard is drinking Port in the library. How is Mary?"

"Sleeping peacefully."

"Thank God. I don't think I can bear another tragedy," he swallowed, placing his hand over hers as she reached to touch his chest.

"Oh my dear," she soothed.

No this was not a burden to be passed to her husband. Not now, not today, she would deal with this. She waited until he was settled into bed before going back downstairs to rejoin her daughters and mother-in-law.

"Girls, would you mind if I spoke to your grandmother alone for a moment?"

"Oh," Edith said, somewhat affronted.

"I'm ready for bed," Sybil yawned.

Both girls got up and each kissed their mother and grandmother goodnight. Edith shot them a suspicious backwards glance as she walked away, her interest piqued.

"Have I offended someone, my dear?"

"No," Cora sat down, her hands clasped in her lap. "I intended to tell Robert but considering all he's enduring I cannot bring myself to."

"So you are taking me into your confidence instead, how satisfying!" The Dowager Countess replied, a wry smile on her lips.

"I went to see Mary..."

"Please, do tell me she is quite well," Violet interjected in alarm.

"She is asleep. However I noticed..." she paused, biting her bottom lip. "Bruises on her wrists."

"Bruises?" Violet drawled, leaning back in her chair stiffly, her hands kneading the top of her cane. "Need I ask who inflicted these injuries?"

Cora shook her head.

"I see. I think we can then safely assume Mary did not fall," her mouth twitched.

"No," she concurred.

"As you know my dear, marriage amongst our sort is a tricky beast, one is not so much tied as bound. However we have only one duty and that is to protect Mary."

"But how?"

"She must remain here, at least until the child is born, there is no question," Violet replied, firmly.

"Should we confront him?"

"That man? No. That would not do. He will know that we know and that will be enough. He appears to have a public persona to maintain, I doubt he wishes the world to know his private affairs."

"And when he's here? Under my roof?" Cora demanded desperately.

"It does not appear he cares a great deal about what 'activities' he engages in under this roof, so we must watch him, so intently that he fears for his life," a glimmer shone in her eyes that suggested she were not entirely joking. "Do not fear, nothing will happen to Mary on my watch."


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: Well here it goes... Thank you so much for your kind reviews, your feedback means so much to me and I love hearing any thoughts and opinions or suggestions for the story. I am a few parts ahead but don't publish anything unbeta-ed as I want everything to be as perfect as possible before I post it. My wonderful WONDERFUL beta Ariadne keeps me on the straight and narrow, you are a super star :-) I hope you all enjoy this next part, I love Teddy, it is hard for me to hurt him..._

* * *

><p><em>We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved<em>

May, 1940

Still we wait. There is pain now and I am still here, drifting in and out of what must be sleep, weaving back through the years to moments long forgotten. Did these things happen? Is it the morphine that whispers in my ear, spewing lies? A beast has its jaws around my ribs; squeezing, piercing my skin. I am small, so small I can crouch beneath the bed, covering my mouth with my hands to contain a suppressed giggle at my prank. _Mama and Papa will be surprised!_ They are not shouting but they are not laughing either, _oh dear perhaps they will be cross. _I lie down, my face pressed to the itchy carpet pile; I cover my other ear with my palm. The bed above me sinks and the door opens, _a pair of shoes_, and I shut my eyes so tightly I can see red. Shouting. I cry quietly, my teeth clenched together. They do not know I am there.

"You in pain, sir?" Red Cross helmet again. "Too soon for more I'm afraid; hang on a bit. I'm sure there's a lot of folks at home want to see you again. We'll get to the front of the queue soon."

"They've sunk another ship!"

"God help those poor souls."

_God help us all._

This is not sleep, it is heavy and agonizing, a leaden shroud. _You sang me to sleep._ This is not sleep. I close my eyes and I am riding Samson, his gleaming coat silken in the sun, my hands firm and confident on the reins. The baying of the hounds in my ears. Take me home to Downton, spirit me away to the other world. _We are the Dead. Short days ago._ Oh I am frightened now, Mama.

"He doesn't look good. We can't take those who have no hope." A new voice, brusque.

_Leave me if you must._

"He's not so bad - he's had albumin, antibiotics, he'll make it."

"They've all got mothers and sweethearts, Corporal, we can't take them all."

"Is that an order, Sir?"

I do not hear the reply. I sleep.

* * *

><p>May, 1918.<p>

"Anna?" Carson asked, rising from his seat.

The heads of everyone around the servants' table turned to face the pale maid as she paused for a moment in the doorway and the room fell into silence.

"Well?" he demanded.

Anna shook her head.

"Not yet. Her Ladyship sent me down to have tea."

"Of course, plenty of sweet tea, keep the spirits up." Mrs Hughes took Anna gently by the shoulders and guided her into a chair.

"And the nerves steady," O'Brien nodded. "One lady I waited on, well, it went on for days and then the baby got stuck coming out. Huge thing it was, poor wretch."

There was a heavy pause.

"Was there a point to that story, Miss O'Brien?" Bates said, giving Anna a gentle smile.

"It's a dangerous business, Mr Bates. I wouldn't expect you to understand - it's women's work."

"It certainly is and I would thank you to keep any anecdotes to yourself, Miss O'Brien," Carson said, adjusting his collar.

"She's alright though, isn't she, Lady Mary?" Daisy asked, placing the cup of tea in front of Anna.

"I think so," Anna replied. "She's in terrible pain. Dr. Clarkson doesn't think it'll be long."

"He thinks the child will be healthy?" Mrs Hughes asked.

"And why wouldn't it be?" Carson demanded.

"Well it's too early, surely?"

Anna lowered her eyes and took a sip of the hot tea, the liquid soothing her parched tongue.

"Has Branson left to collect Sir Richard from the station?" she asked.

"He left ten minutes ago," Mrs Hughes nodded.

"Gentlemen have no place in the birthing chamber," O'Brien interjected, opening her button box and fishing around inside it.

"I'm sure Sir Richard will join His Lordship in the library," Carson said.

"Is there a lot of blood?"

"That's enough of that talk around the dining table," Mrs Patmore blustered, waving an impatient hand at Daisy. "I'm sure you'll find out first hand one day, my girl, and until then it's best not to imagine."

"I'd better get back," Anna declared.

"Yes, back to work everyone."

The butler shut his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, offering up a silent prayer before returning to his duties.

* * *

><p>May, 1918.<p>

Richard sat in the armchair, the fingers of one hand drumming relentlessly on his knee. He considered for a moment before standing up, clasping his hands behind his back and rocking slightly on his heels. His heart was pounding, and no matter how many times he swallowed or moistened his lips, he felt dry, tight with a humming anxiety. He had made an attempt to see Mary, against his better judgment, but had found himself facing a veritable army of women, none of whom were willing to permit him entry. The Dowager Countess had told him to 'run along' and he was reduced to a boy under her withering gaze. If possible, her attitude towards him had frozen even more considerably over the past three months. The wagons had circled. They were protecting her from him, as well they might, and he was shamed. He sat down again.

"Good God man, can you stop jumping up and down like a Jack-in-a-box," Robert snapped, the tension evident across his brow.

"I'm sorry."

"No," Robert shook his head. "I apologize. I'm feeling really rather anxious."

"The wait seems interminable."

"I paced this room for hours the day Mary was born. It doesn't seem very long ago. One feels so powerless; we can only wait and pray."

"I haven't prayed since I was a boy."

"Now may be a good time to reacquaint yourself."

Richard swallowed. He was not a schoolboy any more.

"Dr. Clarkson, what news?" Robert asked, his hand tightening around the glass he was holding as the doctor entered the library.

"Things are progressing. It will not be long; the baby will be here tonight."

Robert nodded, glancing at the pale face of his son in law. Did he trust this man? Would he be able to trust him with his daughter and grandchild? He did not know. He simply did not know. He knew that the man was ruthless, that he was calculating, but he had no evidence that he would not care for Mary. He had no tangible evidence that anything was wrong, and yet unease lurked around the edges of his mind. Life had twisted further from his grasp ever since the war had begun, slipping through his fingers. He was a helpless, spent former solider cast adrift. What purpose were left if it were not to protect his family - his wife, his daughters, his grandchild?

_Matthew. He had not protected Matthew._ The grief rolled around him day after day, in the hollow space inside his stomach. He turned over the scenarios in his mind, swatted away his lawyer's suggestions that they must consider the future of the estate. He could not think of it, he was not ready to accept that a miracle would not be delivered, that Matthew would never return, that a new heir must be found. He shut his eyes. He would pray tonight, for new life and for the old life he had known.

* * *

><p>The high wail broke through the air, shattering the slow silence that had momentarily descended amid the chaos. A collective exhale in a room full of held breath and frayed nerves. Mary shut her eyes as the most sublime relief embraced her and she let the tears stream down her face. <em>Thank you, thank you.<em> With that strident cry the room broke apart once more and she was overcome by voices and activity around her. Her mother was mopping her brow with a cloth -_ well done, my darling_ - tears running down her own cheeks as she stroked her daughter's hair.

The infant screamed once more, spindly arms and legs kicking out at this cold, confusing world. A tiny face contorted in fury at such a rude awakening - _it's a boy!_ - both arms raised in an arc as if waiting for an embrace. Faces bent over his and the shrieks subsided as busy hands wrapped and swaddled him until he was confined in warmth once more. Wide eyes set beneath a pair of knitted brows looked up at Sybil as she smiled down on the baby, rocking him securely in her arms as the doctor and Anna readied Mary to hold him.

Edith reached and gently touched a little cheek. Her lip trembled, and Sybil extended her free arm and hugged her sister close.

"He's perfect," Edith said as Sybil moved to the bedside and passed the bundle into Mary's arms.

_Perfect._ Cora let out a cry and covered her mouth with her hand.

"Oh, look at his face!"

Mary's heart plummeted and a great current of emotion overtook her until she could barely catch her breath. He was here and she consumed every detail of the small face upturned to hers. He looked into her eyes and he knew every part of her. The dark hair, hastily rubbed dry, stood out in fluffy strands from underneath the shawl, and the remnants of blood clung to the shell of a small ear. He was everything, and it was almost too much to believe that she could be rewarded like this, that this whole innocent soul could have come from her. His little lips parted and pursed into a wondering 'o' as she bent down and kissed his forehead.

"Anna, do fetch His Lordship!" Cora beamed.

"Yes, m'Lady," she replied, wiping her own tears quickly with her sleeve.

_Matthew was not here_. It descended on her as quickly as that first flush of love for the baby in her arms. _He was not here._ Her heart tore as joy and grief intermingled in the tears that slid down her neck and soaked into her nightdress. She bowed her head over the baby and sobbed, her hands drawing him as close to her as possible. Her mother and sisters knitted around her, but she felt as if it were only she and this small boy in the world, that only he could reach her heart.

He looked like Matthew. Of course he did. Life is cruel and merciful in equal measure.

* * *

><p>He could hardly refuse as they all stood around the bed watching him. He took the baby awkwardly from Cora, who was poorly disguising her reluctance to part with her grandson. He let her adjust the copious shawls and fiddle with the infant's bonnet. He found his shoulders were hunched and his arms stiff as he struggled to hold the bundle in a satisfactory manner. Richard looked down into a miniature face, still in sleep, long dark eyelashes fluttering slightly as if the child were dreaming. What could it possibly dream of? Should he say something, make some admiring comment to the room at large? He found himself lost for words. He had no true part in this, no claim on this small person and yet he did feel something. Something that had rendered him speechless.<p>

"Congratulations," Violet said, her eyes watchful. "A most precious gift."

He found he could do little but nod.

"Is his name settled?" Robert asked.

"Theodore," Mary replied.

"Gift of god," Violet nodded in approval. "How apt."

"Teddy!" Cora smiled, leaning into her husband.

"Teddy," Richard repeated, touching the small fist that poked from beneath the blanket.

When they were finally left alone Mary closed her eyes, and he held his silence as she drifted into an exhausted sleep. She did not want him there, and yet he could not leave. He sat beside the crib and looked in on the sleeping baby, blissfully unaware as it moved in slumber, wriggling underneath the blankets until finally those dark blue eyes opened and stared up at him accusingly. He felt a deep twinge and placed his hand on the shawl, patting uncertainly as the child made as if to cry. He reached into the bassinet - he could have just walked away but he did not - and picked the baby up, loosening the blankets to better see its small form.

"Don't cry," he said as the infant writhed in his hands.

The whimpers seemed to ease, and emboldened, he held the child up so it's head lolled against his shoulder, a tiny body curled up into a ball against his chest. The downy hair on the baby's head stood up in angel fine strands which tickled his cheek, and he leaned back into the chair, watching the little face that bobbed inches from his own.

"I think we should let your mama rest, don't you?" he asked his silent companion.

The baby acquiesced and rested a floppy head against his chest, curling up tighter as if eager to return to the womb. _He was a thief._ He had stolen the only chance this child had of ever knowing the man who gave him life. He had done many things he could not be proud of but this was something of a pinnacle. What choice was there now? He sat in another man's place, the man he had forced out, sent to his death, whose letter he had stolen but could not burn. He could love this boy as a son, keep him safe, and perhaps he could have something of Mary's heart too. _Perhaps._ What he knew with certainty now, that in his darkest moments he had not been sure of, was that he could never harm this child.

* * *

><p>June, 1940.<p>

**It is with regret that I must inform you that your son, Captain Theodore A.R. Carlisle has been injured in the Battle of Dunkirk.**

_Injured._

_Teddy is injured._

There is a strange relief in having something so close to ones worst fears realized, a vacuum of hope opening and swelling to fill the sob that came from my mouth. _You are alive._ _You will come back to me. _I am selfish. I will take you any how, any way; whatever is left of your life I will cherish; whatever can return of my boy, I will protect and preserve with all I have. _Where there is life there is hope. _There is only one place for me to be now, one place that draws me back, a cord never severed, strengthened and taut around my heart. _Take me back to the start._

As I turn around, the telegram limp in my hands, I face a silent mass of staff congregated in the hallway. Many have know you since you were a baby. Mrs Heller takes my hand in hers and squeezes it, gently prising the piece of paper from my fingers. In a fleeting moment, I miss Richard. Richard who always took care of 'arrangements,' nothing outside of his capacious reach; I barely needed to breathe when he was there, such was his control. Always in control, _almost_ always. When it came to it, he could not control that which bound me to your father, to Matthew. We ripped and pulled, tore until the pieces were too diffuse to reassemble, until Richard was gone, Papa was gone and so in all essence was I. There was nothing left to feel. _We can never be together._

And yet you were always there, more alive, more beautiful; more than we deserved. I think now of the chain of events that led me to this moment, to being helped into my coat, to a bag I do not recall packing being pressed into my hand as the car waits to take me to the station. I think of those things, and I gain the sense that the world has shifted and once more everything has changed. There is no bolt hole. I will face anything for you, even the ugliness of the truth. I know Matthew, and I knew when he held me that day on the train platform, as you were spirited away from us that the threads that held apart our disparate worlds were breaking. I knew but I was not ready to forget and as I pressed my face to his shoulder I pulled away from his embrace. _This is too fragile to hold any longer. _The damage we had caused cut through us, and as I stepped away, he looked at me the way he had looked, oh too many times before.

We all make choices; I can regret all but one. I remember it now, the choice I made, that _we _made, that brought us to this point. Twenty two years ago I was a different person and yet I cannot imagine my reactions being any different today.

_Mary! _I heard his voice call my name that day as I walked in the grounds.

I turned and he quickened his pace. He was not wearing his uniform jacket, and I wondered how long it had been since I had seen him only in shirtsleeves, if I had ever seen him in shirtsleeves.

"I wanted to catch you."

"Oh?"

"It's so very hot."

I smiled and resisted rolling my eyes at the mention of the weather.

"I'm afraid we will not remember August 1917 for the sheer warmth of the summer."

"No," and the war hung in the shadows beneath his eyes. "Can I walk with you? It may be cooler under the trees."

He fell into an easy stride beside me, a habit of old as the distance of almost three years dissolved as quickly as it had appeared.

"I'm so glad we are friends again. It is all so much easier to face now I know that." He looked straight ahead as we walked.

"Is it very awful at the front?"

He stopped and my chest heaved as he turned his face to the canopy of trees above us and shut his eyes.

"I cannot tell you how awful, how…" he swallowed and shook his head, looking off into the woods. "How damn cruel."

"Oh, Matthew." I reached and touched his forearm.

He faced me then and the act of his turning from the trees meant we were inches apart, unintentionally, our bodies almost touching and yet neither of us pulled back. Not then. Not when the next decision would change us forever.

"Mary."

His lips met mine and the world imploded.

Afterwards I did not truly understand how it had happened, simply that it had. I closed my eyes and felt his hands around my waist, his lips pressed against mine, the bark of the tree behind me digging into my back. We were alive. _I am more alive than I've ever been._ For a split second the question had hovered on my tongue - _will you regret this?_ - but it was all too quickly consumed by his kiss. There was something in his eyes, something wild, reckless, something I did not recognize but I felt no doubt, no uncertainty. We were alone and there was nothing, nobody else. The years combined and I gave up, gave in, gave every last piece of myself. For if it were all to end tomorrow, this would be all that mattered, his bare skin against mine. Tomorrow does not exist.

He believed he was to die. I realized that as the mists cleared from my mind. If that were to happen he must take this moment with him. He must take me with him. One cannot see so much death and depravity without wishing to take that which one yearns for above all else, take it onwards into battle. It fulfilled us and we felt no regret. It was as if a great leap forward had transected our consciences, slicing through us and leaving us powerless to resist. Teetering on a precipice until the desire became too strong. It would not have happened without the war, it released us in a way, our passion all the more urgent because of it.

I pulled back at first, shocked, surprised, but then I was in his arms. Totally, completely in his embrace. _If this is all we will ever have it is perfect._ The guilt would come later I knew that but as I buried my face in the hollow of his neck it was the end of an interminable wait. A moment that would change everything, an act we would never forget. Later that day, his hand had slipped from mine on the station platform, but the warmth of his body remained against me as he waved in farewell. He would not return to me; with a crushing certainty I felt that then. He was never meant to be mine. I did not deserve the picture to be completed. We would only have that day, that humid August afternoon.

I fought back tears as the train disappeared into a cloud of steam. Everything had changed and yet a dark shadow hung around me._ This is not what fate has in store for you; he is lent to you._ I shook my head slightly and closed my eyes as if this would dismiss these thoughts. But they persisted, and I saw him, his face smiling above me, a crown of leaves around his head and everything so hot. _You will never feel that warmth again._

Perhaps you were only lent to me too.

* * *

><p>May, 1918.<p>

"Can we come in?" Isobel asked, although she already had.

"Yes, of course," Mary summoned every ounce of strength to smile, adjusting her nightgown as the baby rolled replete in her arms, little cheeks slack.

Isobel and Lavinia approached the bed, gazing reverently at the infant.

"Oh, Mary, he is just beautiful."

"Thank you."

_I'm sorry._

"Can I hold him?"

It was Lavinia who asked. How could she refuse? She watched as the other woman cradled him gently. She smiled, but Mary could see she was crying. Her soft girlish face pale with genuine emotion as she whispered something to the baby, her face close to his, stroking the impossibly delicate fingers that fanned apart in sleep. Too terrible, too irredeemable, but she could not regret him, could not pretend she wished he were Lavinia's child. Isobel too was crying, tears that would not fall as she reached to smooth a tiny ear.

"I cannot help but think of Matthew."

Mary felt as if the blood had left her body. She opened her mouth to speak, what would she say? Any words caught in her throat as, having entered the room unheard, Richard appeared at the foot of the bed, an unlikely savior. Isobel and Lavinia looked up, and he did nothing to make them feel they were not intruding. Reluctantly Lavinia returned Teddy to Mary's arms and both women stood.

"Congratulations."

Richard nodded and watched as Isobel put her arm around Lavinia's trembling shoulders as they left the room. Mary turned her face away.

"It is done," he said, standing over her. "Do not punish yourself further."

"I suppose you will do that for me."

"I have not sought to punish you, I only ask now that we keep our promises to each other."

"You think that I should trust you?"

"I regret my behavior, Mary, believe me, I do."

"Which particular piece of behavior do you find regrettable, or are you sorry for all of it?" She surveyed him, his manner peculiar to her, a contradiction of much that had come before.

"He will be safe with me." He nodded at Teddy. "You both will."

"I have little choice but to believe you," she replied, breaking his gaze and looking down at the baby.

Safety was, after all, the best she could hope for now.


	10. Chapter 10

_A/N: Thank you, thank you for all your lovely kind reviews and comments, they are so appreciated. I hope you enjoy this next part although I realise it is a tad bleak at times._

* * *

><p><em>I have almost forgot the taste of fears.<em>

* * *

><p>Armistice Day, 1918<p>

"Perhaps we should leave him with Nanny, it is rather cold," Richard suggested as Mary wrapped another blanket around the baby.

"He will be fine. We'll be in the car."

"Very well," he replied, gesturing her and the nursemaid ahead of him through the front door.

He looked at the baby, who beamed at him from his position hoisted over the nurse's shoulder, his woolen hat comically low over bright eyes. Richard was unable to help himself and smiled back. Mary caught him smiling as the chauffeur handed her into the car and frowned slightly.

"What is so amusing?" She asked.

"I apologize, I will be somber from here on in, my dear."

Mary's eyes travelled out of the window, with the intention of ignoring any further conversation Richard might feel compelled to make during their short journey. She could hardly believe it. The war was over. A cold, clear day and the curtain had fallen on the uncertainty, the misery, the torment of a battle that seemed as if it would never end, and yet it had. It had ended and she remained.

"Mary, darling," Cora greeted them in the hallway. "Richard." She allowed him to kiss her cheek. "And my precious Teddy! Come here my little darling, aren't you well wrapped up, goodness!"

Mary watched as her mother fussed over her grandson. Never had a child been more adored. She smiled despite herself. Teddy was surrounded by devoted admirers vying for a smile or a chuckle, tickling him and stroking his rosy cheeks. Some days she could hardly believe it when she looked into his crib, but on others, it was as if the past five and a half months encompassed her whole life, as if there had been nothing before Teddy.

"Dear little chap." Robert took the infant from his wife, cradling him upright in the crook of his arm.

Mary stood stiffly beside Richard as her father addressed those who had congregated in the Great Hall - family, servants and soldiers. The men who had returned. Robert dismissed the nanny as she made to take Teddy and kissed his grandson's soft dark hair as the clock struck eleven. Mary looked across to Isobel, standing with her hand in Sybil's, her eyes glazed and steady. She shut her own eyes and Matthew was there, his open, honest face before hers and his fingers softly entwined in her hand. She remembered, that day and everything that came before it. Their relationship had completed a circle, fragments in a sphere whose centre was hollow, so much unsaid, and yet there was Teddy and he expressed all that was missing. _I love you and there can never be anyone else. Oh, for one more moment_, she begged as she allowed her imagination to slip past the reality of the empty two minutes.

Lost in her reverie, she flinched as a hand gently took hers, but she did not pull away. Tears pinched at her eyes, and she knew if she blinked they would surely fall, spill out around her and make everything slippery underfoot. She would not be able to keep her balance. His grip steadied her as the last second ticked by and when she turned, she found her face pressed to his chest, his arms around her. She recovered herself, shaking off Richard's embrace, confused, yet who else could understand how she felt this day? However twisted and skewed it was, only Richard could sense the depth of her pain, and for that brief moment she had let him in, let him through. She did not forgive him, and yet she did not entirely blame him either; whatever else he had done, he remained at her side and in his own perverse way he had protected her.

What had Matthew thought of before the end had come? For it surely had come. Had he thought of her, of their child? Or had he thought of a woman he had once known and who had been revealed to him as something else, someone he did not recognize, someone he would not fight to reclaim? Or did he not think of her at all?

Robert was talking softy to Isobel, and Mary's stomach lurched as he handed Teddy to her. She started to walk over to them, but this time a hand closed firmly around her wrist and once more her warden kept her to the path.

"Stay by me."

* * *

><p>November, 1918<p>

He felt nothing. Nothing as the train pulled into the station. Nothing when his leg buckled as he stepped from the carriage. Nothing as kind hands helped him to his feet and returned the dropped crutch to his hand. He caught sight of his reflection in the train window for a moment, a pale, drawn ghost of a man. _Home._ He was home. Against all but the smallest hope he had survived, a returning prisoner of war, and yet he found he was unable to take a full breath of the crisp winter air. His feet carried him; he hardly needed to think as he cut a well-worn path through the village. He did not see the glances or hear the whispered gestures of those awake early on the coldest of November days, the sun barely risen as they carried on with their business. _Is that Captain Crawley? _He supposed most of all he felt confused, looking out through eyes that were misted, eyes that remained fixed inward on the terrible things he had seen. He knew who he was and where he was and that the war was over, but much else seemed little more than a dream.

He pushed open the gate of Crawley House, a finely pitched noise issuing from an under-oiled hinge_. So familiar and yet so strange. _Matthew reached to the knocker but paused as his hand curled around the ornate brass, his fingers twitched and trembled and he almost let his hand fall. A sharp rap rang in his ears as he watched the metal connect to the struck plate. No going back; he was returned to the land of the living, falling back into their lives. When Molesley opened the door his mouth dropped open, and he staggered back as if confronted by the ghost of Christmas past. Matthew stood there, still and stiff. He did not cross the threshold, and it took the valet taking his arm in order for him to step into the house.

The world span around him and he closed his eyes.

"Matthew."

_Matthew. _He saw Mary; suddenly she filled his vision, captivated his mind, but when he opened his eyes it was his mother's face that looked back at him. He felt her pull him into the tightest of embraces, clinging to him as if his very presence was tenuous, as if he might disintegrate in her hands. He let her lead him upstairs, his knuckles white on the banister and her arm around his back to support him. He allowed her to help him undress, his own dressing gown alien around his shoulders, the very room grown unfamiliar. She washed his face, talking to him softly all the while as she had when he was a boy.

"I simply cannot believe you are here." Her hand closed around his, and he found the strength to squeeze it back as his face remained a mask. "So much is changed. We thought you would never be returned to us."

"I am not sure I have been," he replied finally, his voice strange to his own ears.

"Do not speak now," Isobel said. "You must sleep and awaken in this new world." She reached and smoothed his cheek. "My darling boy."

His body refreshed, Matthew allowed her to pull the eiderdown over him, and yet he still found he was cold, that the edges of his body shivered and stung against the soft sheets. _Too soft._ Beneath his back, the rotten mattress remained, the smell of the other men lying shoulder to shoulder with him in that dank, putrid room. The sweet scents of perspiration and urine were enough to make the eyes water as the clothes he had just shed seemed to claw their way back over his flesh, pinning him down. He forced his eyes closed and almost at once sleep came; it came in the guise of sheer exhaustion, an exhaustion that pushed him down into the bed and turned his limbs to lead. He slept and almost at once he was cast back to hell and the images and sensations were violent, taking him by the shoulders and shaking him until he screamed. He screamed and screamed. He screamed until firm hands took hold of his arms.

"Matthew!"

It was Robert and with a breathless moan Matthew allowed the older man to take him in his arms as he bolted upright in the bed, bathed in sweat.

"Where is Mary?" he gasped.

"I will bring her, dear boy, I will bring her," Robert replied, exchanging a glance with Isobel who stood watching in the door way, her hands over her mouth in anguish.

Matthew sank back against the pillow, and Robert reached to grip both of his hands, holding them fast before easing himself free.

"Dr Clarkson is on his way." Isobel's voice shook as they stepped together out of earshot. "He has said very little about what has happened."

"He will receive the very best care; we will all care for him together. He is alive, that is what is important."

"I must telephone Lavinia. Have you told anyone else in the family?"

"No. I came with Molesley immediately. I can hardly believe it, I feel the most tremendous relief, I cannot express it."

Isobel nodded tightly.

"I told him I would bring Mary."

"Then you must. We must do what Matthew asks us to, do whatever we can to return him completely to us."

* * *

><p>Mary sensed a presence behind her and turned slowly, too slowly for the man waiting in the doorway. Teddy dozed against her chest, and as she saw her father's face, she pressed him tightly to her, his warm compact body stirring slightly at the increase in pressure and he let out a little sound.<p>

"Papa?"

"Is Richard here?"

"He isn't back from London yet. Why?"

"Sit down, darling."

She sat; she could do little else as her legs swam under her.

"Matthew is alive."

_Matthew is alive. _A cry escaped her lips. An impossible shining moment exploded around her and she thought for a moment that she might drop the baby.

"He is at Crawley House." Robert watched as the colour drained from his daughter's face. He feared she was going to faint and reached out to take his grandson. "I know this quite a shock, but he has asked for you."

She found she could not speak; the urge to confess everything to her father, to let it all wash from her soul was almost overwhelming.

"I will ring for Nanny, and you can come with me now. Branson is waiting with the car."

"Yes. Of course," she managed, forcing the words from her throat as she pressed her fingers and thumbs together in her lap.

They sat side by side silently, and as the car pulled away from Haxby, Robert took Mary's hand in his. She did not turn her face; she couldn't, she could not look at him as the lie swelled and expanded between them. She had watched her father mourn Matthew, the man who had become more of a son than a distant cousin, and she had been weighed down by her farce. How could she continue this now? How could she possibly continue to pretend when they had been given another chance? She could face anything shoulder to shoulder with Matthew. Let Richard ruin her, let him try to tear the family apart, it would not matter. _And if he does not feel the same? _Richard's words that night rang in her ears. Is that what the letter had contained? _It was a mistake. _

His back was turned to them in the bed as they entered the room, and Mary felt that the sheer action of breathing was too difficult.

"Matthew."

He turned to face them and a chill swept over her. A darkness lay across his eyes, and she wondered for a moment if he was blind. She stood very still and felt her father's hand at her back.

"Matthew?" she whispered, desperation sliding into her voice.

"Matthew?" Robert repeated, going over to the bed and kneeling beside it. "Can you hear us?"

A barely perceptible nod.

"I am going to speak with Cousin Isobel," Robert announced, a shadow passing across his own face as he left them alone.

He was not looking at her; he was staring intently at the open door, so much so that she turned to see if anyone stood there. She took a tentative step forward before kneeling down close to the side of the bed as her father had done. She took his hand, which was hanging over the edge of the bedframe. It was cold and limp, and he did not respond to her touch.

"It's Mary," she said, trying to inject something more than the horror she felt at his appearance into her voice.

His eyes flickered to look at her momentarily, and she thought there was something, a flash in the pale blue dimness.

"Of course it is," he replied.

"Oh Matthew." She closed her eyes in relief. "Do you remember?"

"I do not know if what I remember is real."

She pressed his fingers to her lips, then rested her cheek against his hand, hardy believing that she were touching him again. She wanted nothing more than to get onto the bed beside him, lie next to him and hold his battered body. He was not entirely present and in that moment neither was she, reality faded away around them as for a brief moment she felt his fingers move to smooth her face. The soft footfalls behind her jerked her back to the room, and she let his hand drop. Matthew's face registered nothing as she stood quickly and smoothed the front of her dress. Isobel smiled, but something tugged around the corners of her eyes as Mary reverted to a well practiced version of composure.

"Your father is talking to Dr Clarkson. We should allow Matthew to rest."

Mary followed her from the room, looking back for a moment, but Matthew's eyes were shut. Isobel stopped on the landing, her eyes examining Mary's own with intensity.

"Lavinia is on her way," she said gently, and Mary could not stop herself flinching. "He is going to need all of us, and I know how much you care for him, but most of all Matthew will need his wife."

Mary nodded, unblinking.

"And little Teddy needs you," Isobel continued. "You must conserve your resources."

* * *

><p>"Is it true?" Richard demanded.<p>

"Yes, Matthew is alive," she replied, her back to him at the dressing table, her eyes cast down so she could not see his face in the mirror.

"This changes nothing."

She looked up and caught his eye, caught the anxiety there, and for a moment he was vulnerable.

"It changes everything."

"Don't be ridiculous! I will not divorce you."

"There is nothing you can do to me that could be worse that what I've been through. None of this," she gestured around the exquisitely furnished room, "means anything."

"I see." His voice was chilling and quiet. "You will run off with Matthew, live God knows where until he is fit to work again, if he is ever fit to work again. You will be cast out but together – how romantic."

She sighed and turned around on the stool to look up at him.

"You will bring down your family for your own personal desires. And what of Teddy? You and Matthew will not be able to marry, he will be a bastard, that is what you want for him?" Richard continued.

"I do not care what people say." She stood to face him, a challenging tilt to her jaw.

"Then you are even more selfish than I thought." He stepped towards her but she did not back down. "This is what he wants too, is it; these are also his desires?"

Her gaze faltered and Richard preyed on this chink of uncertainty, a smile stretching across his mouth.

"Ah, I see. Matthew has had little to say on the matter as yet, but no doubt he will concur." He nodded, satisfied. "Of course you can run but, legally speaking, I am Teddy's father, and if I cannot keep you, I will not let him go."

She felt as if he had struck her in the chest.

"You could not do that."

"Are you sure?" he asked, cupping her cheek in his hand. "Are you willing to take that risk, my dear?"

He knew she would not risk losing Teddy. She had surprised him and, he suspected, the rest of her family with how naturally she had taken to motherhood. She doted on the boy and loved him passionately, quite at ease around him, every tension dropping away. Richard rather wished he could inspire this kind of feeling in her, but although she played her part, fulfilled every wifely duty, she was cold to his touch. He realized he could expect little else after he had so beaten her into submission. He felt that with time there was a chance she would return his feelings. He truly loved her – he realized this fully after Teddy was born – and he would do anything to make her happy, except let her go. No, that he would not do.


	11. Chapter 11

_Too brief for our passion, too long for our peace._

June, 1940

I knew. I knew as soon as I saw her face, as I turned from the warming glow of the sun against my skin and felt the chill as my eyes met hers. She covered her face with her hands, and whatever resolve she had been maintaining seemed to splinter. I caught her and held her tightly but found I could not stay standing either. Our legs gave way between us and left us clinging to each other on the ground beneath that beautiful cedar. With my hand at her neck, I could feel her pulse fluttering beneath my thumb – _Is he alive? – _and I felt her nod against my shoulder, her fingers digging into my chest. Oh what relief, what a sweet brief reprieve. _My son is alive. _When I finally helped her to her feet, I did not feel the moment overtake me, I did not know I had been consumed until the rush soared through my head and the sky exploded into light. My lips were upon hers, and we swayed slightly, our hands gripping each other too tightly as if the ground beneath us was opening, swallowing and devouring us. I kissed her as if I never would again.

All those years ago, we were young and I was foolish and confused, but it was no mistake. I have made so many mistakes but you were not one. God gave you to us, and you were always meant to be. Now we are older, and I am no wiser as to the meaning of it all, but I know I have never really been separate from you or from your mother.

We were not alone, and as we parted I caught sight of Lavinia standing several feet away, the angle of the sun obscuring the expression on her face. As she walked towards us the light fell away, and I could barely recognize her, the pinched agony as she watched us step apart. She regarded us, and her eyes were empty.

"I'm sorry," your mother said, and Lavinia shut her eyes for a moment, tilting back her chin and biting her lip. "I never meant for you to be hurt."

"You haven't hurt me. You have destroyed me."

There was nothing to say.

"I can never forgive you. No sin goes unpunished."

She turned away. That familiar guilt did not impinge on my conscience, I had felt it for so long, it was almost as if the emotion had run dry. I know only that that there has been just one woman who has ever held my heart. You should know that my wife is not a cruel person; life has made her hard, forged a brittle shell around someone once so gentle. She believes we deserve to lose you, and she may be right. But I will not let you go now. I have let you go too many times before. Your mother pressed her face to my chest, and I held her knowing that now we would face what is to come together, that when you wake we will both be there.

* * *

><p>December, 1918<p>

Teddy beamed up at her, kicking out his legs and arms as she smiled back. He gurgled in delight as she kissed his cheeks and held his soft little fists.

"You are Mama's sweet angel," Mary cooed, tickling his cheek before picking him up and breathing in his heavenly scent.

"Shall I take him from you, m'Lady?"

"No, thank you, Nanny. I'll take him downstairs, you can collect him when luncheon is served."

How she wished she could still call this her home, that she could batten down the doors and remain here, protected and cosseted once more. How spoilt she had been, all of her life, and yet she had been restless here, roaming these corridors, trapped as life moved around her. The happiest and the worst moments had taken place in this house, and it beat inside her heart. Haxby was beautiful and ostentatious, every modern convenience, every material desire catered for, but it was not her home and never could be. Mary felt as if she would never be home again.

Matthew had come home. He was here, but he was a shadow, as removed as she was from the warm pulse that once pounded through these rooms. She had not seen him since that day. Lavinia had arrived that night and all she knew was what her father told her, that Matthew had a long road to recovery. It was his mind; his mind was broken. These last ten days - had it only been ten days? – she had waited, waited for him to come to Haxby, but he had not. As the days passed, her husband's demeanour changed, triumph once more creeping into the curl of his lips. She sensed Richard's eyes upon her every morning as they breakfasted together – he insisted that they eat all meals together even though she ate very little – and she felt as if he enjoyed watching her struggle to swallow.

"Oh, hello."

Mary stirred from her thoughts at the bottom of the stairs as her sister greeted her. She smiled as Edith took Teddy's hand, grinning as he gave her a trusting smile.

"I'm so glad you decided to come to lunch. Will Richard be here?"

"I expect so. He had some telephone calls to make this morning."

"I do wish Matthew was well enough to join us," Edith said, walking beside Mary companionably.

Mary glanced at her quickly, suspicious that this was in some way a barbed comment, but her sister was still smiling at Teddy.

"He will come when he is ready."

Mary saw Lavinia first as they stepped into the drawing room, her chest constricting as Edith let out a small sound of surprise as the man with his back to them turned.

"Cousin Matthew!" Edith went to him and took his hand immediately. "I was just saying how we were longing to see you up and about!"

He was so very pale. The moment his eyes held hers could not have lasted more than mere seconds, but she consumed his gaze, desperately, hungrily, as the cold fingers of doubt sought to knead her heart. _Are you there, Matthew? _She held Teddy on her hip, and Matthew's expression remained unreadable in those few silent moments as his eyes travelled to the infant.

"Isn't he just the most beautiful baby, Matthew?" Lavinia said.

"Yes," Matthew replied, pausing. "Most beautiful." He nodded.

He would not meet her gaze now, as if any exchange would betray them. He lowered himself stiffly into a chair, and Mary noticed for the first time that he held a stick. She wanted to scream, and her hand tightened around Teddy's chubby leg drawn across her waist.

"Teddy has been our light in the darkest of times," Robert said, his hand moving to rest on Matthew's shoulder.

Mary let Edith take Teddy and watched as she and Lavinia began to coo over him, taking him to the chaise lounge and clapping his hands together for him as he sat straight-backed on Edith's knees before an adoring audience.

"How are you feeling?" Mary asked pointlessly, a smile so forced it was painful.

"Every day I wake a little more," he frowned in response, his gaze directed at his own hands in his lap. "It has felt a terribly long nightmare."

"The very worst is behind you," Robert said. "You have much to look forward to, dear boy."

"Come and meet Matthew, Teddy."

Mary's breath caught in her throat as Lavinia picked Teddy up and carried him to Matthew, placing the baby on Matthew's knee so that he had no choice but to hold him. Teddy had only recently begun to show a wariness around strangers, and he looked up at the man holding him suspiciously, his bottom lip jutting out slightly. With no further warning, his little face crumpled and he broke into a loud open-mouthed cry, arching his back and twisting away.

"What's all this?"

She turned and Richard strode past her into the room, reaching down and taking Teddy from Matthew with one swift movement. She fancied there was a brief moment of resistance as Richard took the baby under his arms and removed him from Matthew's grasp. Her stomach twisted as Teddy's wail shuddered to a halt, and he rested his head against Richard's shoulder.

"Well, you'll have plenty of time to get to know each other," Robert said. "He really is the sweetest child."

"I don't doubt it," Matthew replied and his voice sounded so flat. "I am a stranger, after all."

* * *

><p>He looked down at the knife and fork in his hands, and they felt awkward held there, poised over the chicken breast. He caught snatches of conversation around him and occasionally felt Lavinia's hand on his knee under the table, but his head was filled with that cry, with Teddy's face. Oh, he was the sweetest child, and Matthew had been in no way prepared to lay eyes on him at that moment, for the first time, clasped to Mary's hip. Lavinia had been telling him about the child for days, how lovely he was, how charming, how he smiled and played with everyone. He supposed that she thought this would in some way cheer him; she knew no better.<p>

Matthew had felt sick and found that he had barely listened - _everyone is quite besotted with little Teddy_. Then, without warning, the solid weight of the baby had been placed on his knee, and the feeling and emotion came so close to the surface for a moment, so close he could almost touch it, but yet he could not gain purchase on it's slippery form. His mind was so dark, so stagnant, and it was as if the child felt this as he looked up at him with such a knowing expression. _You have not fought for me, you have no fight left. _He felt pathetic and wasted in that moment, but for a fleeting second, he had held a little tighter as Richard took the boy from him. The action was so firm and quick, Matthew felt that if he had held on, Richard would have continued to pull anyway until he was forced to let go or tear the child apart.

"We must make this Christmas particularly special," Cora declared. "It is Teddy's first, and we have had Matthew returned to us."

"I quite agree." Isobel nodded with a smile to her son. "However, we must let Matthew participate only as much as he is able."

"I am here, Mother," Matthew replied, a little too sharply, causing the rest of the table to pause momentarily.

"I only meant we must not make the occasion too overwhelming, the war having only just ended."

"Teddy will not remember," Mary added. "So let's not go overboard on his account."

"I'm afraid I have already gone quite overboard in Hamleys, my dear," Richard said.

"I am not sure a seven month old child requires a great deal in the way of toys. What have you bought him, Richard, a motor car?" Violet asked.

"I shall save that for his birthday. I have bought him a rocking horse amongst other things. Surely it is a father's prerogative to spoil his son at Christmas?"

Matthew's eyes flickered, and he gripped his cutlery too tightly as he felt Richard glance in his direction.

"I'm sure none of us wish to _spoil _Teddy, but I agree it is difficult not to indulge one's children, especially when they are just _so _delightful," Cora said lightly with a smile around the table.

Matthew pushed back his chair so suddenly that it caused Lavinia and Violet, sitting either side of him, to jump in their seats.

"Excuse me," he muttered, taking his stick and leaving the table, to the barely concealed astonishment of the rest of the party.

Lavinia made quickly to follow him, and Robert gave a slight shake of his head to discourage comment from anyone else. Mary's head spun, and she lowered her face and shut her eyes for a moment.

The noise was unbearable, so much so that he felt as if his skull were too tight against the skin. Before he knew where he was going, he was in the library. Matthew felt the stick fly from his hand and clatter with force against the bookcase. There was an empty glass resting on a side table and he picked it up, felt its smooth surface turn to fire beneath his fingers as he threw it at the hearth. The vessel shattered, a high chime as the light tingle of crystal breaking turned to a roar in his ears. In his hands he felt the flesh of the man he'd found dead beside him in the camp, the rubbery grey texture of rigor, the waxen appearance of that man's dead hand strangling a photograph. He had fallen asleep beside this man, and when he had woken, cold and aching, the man had fled to the other land, his mouth and eyes grotesquely, permanently open. Matthew had prised the photograph from an iron grasp, why he did not know; it was of a woman, a young pretty woman who did not smile. He put the picture into the dead man's breast pocket and called for the guard.

He was here. Why him, why should he survive? Survive only to lie, to deceive the family and wife who had waited for him. To watch as another man bought his son a rocking horse and kissed the woman who should be his wife. _You did this! You are weak and afraid, and you are too far to turn back. _Oh how he despised himself, hated this soaring rage and the powerless dread that seemed to focus itself now on the deep gash struggling to heal on his leg. _Cut me open and rip out my soul._

Unbidden in his mind, dispersed amid the omnipresent smell of mud, of blood, he saw Mary, saw her as she had been that day between the trees. He felt her in his arms, tightly drawn to him, and he felt the dream of never letting go. _I'm pregnant. _How she had brought life rushing into focus, and yet he could not be brave even then; he had been cowed by Richard, by the man who had taken it all. Had Richard not earned it? Matthew had walked away, not once but twice; he did not deserve to have Teddy regard him as anything other than a stranger.

He was kneeling on the floor, leaning forwards so his forehead rested against the wall, and he did not hear the silent contingent Lavinia had summoned behind him. He did not feel their anguish, only his own pain as Robert coaxed him to his feet, and he turned to meet their eyes.

Mary was crying, silently, her arms clasped across herself in an embrace.

"Matthew," she whispered.

He fixed his eyes to hers and a shiver clawed the back of her neck.

"I cannot be here!" It came from his mouth in a strangled shout, directed straight at her.

Richard put his arm protectively around Mary's waist as Matthew pushed his way unsteadily past them, a stiff silence in his wake.

* * *

><p>If Isobel was surprised to see him there, she did not show it. She courteously informed him that Lavinia had gone to Ripon and that Matthew was in his bedroom. She bade him to wait in the drawing room, and Richard was not unduly surprised when she returned to tell him that Matthew did not wish to see anyone. Under the guise of engaging in conversation with Molesley, Richard waited until Isobel was called upon for a discussion with one of the servants before making his way upstairs uninvited, leaving Molesley standing uncertainly in the hallway.<p>

He had been disturbed, he did not mind admitting, to see Matthew holding Teddy. He had developed a fondness for the child disproportionate to what he had expected, a fact he largely kept concealed from Mary, for it made him vulnerable. He took pleasure in the boy's hearty growth, from that tiny, delicate newborn to the robust, cheerful little soul who now greeted him so enthusiastically. It was surprisingly gratifying to be favoured and sought by a child, to earn a smile or a laugh, to be able to instill some comfort during Teddy's rare periods of distress when his mother was not immediately available.

Shortly after Matthew's return, Richard had been woken in the night by Teddy's crying. Unusually, Mary did not stir, and he had made his way to the nursery himself. Nanny's usual magic seemed to have escaped her, and when Richard entered the room, Teddy had worked himself to such a peak of distress that he had vomited. Nanny removed his nightclothes and handed the clammy child to Richard whilst she went to fetch more. Teddy's face was puffy and his right cheek was red. His sobs jerked to an unsteady whimpering and, with a final gasp, he relaxed his head over Richard's shoulder. He was so innocently trusting; he loved implicitly, without the prejudice induced by the disappointment and betrayals revealed at childhood's end. He was indeed a precious gift, a gift that was not his to receive. Richard held the baby tightly as he thought of the man who had a right to claim him, of that most unexpected of resurrections. _I will not give them back. _

Matthew was seated in a chair, looking out of the window, one leg resting on a stool. The trouser was rolled up and a deep purple rivet ran up the outside of his calf.

"Hello, Matthew."

Matthew turned to face him. He did not reply, and Richard felt as if the other man were looking through him.

"I apologize for intruding, but I felt we must speak alone. I wish to make my position quite clear."

"I see."

"I am sure we can agree on one thing," Richard began smoothly.

"Yes, I think we probably can," Matthew replied, and he focused on the other man's face for the first time.

"Mary and Teddy deserve the very best life can offer, and I am wholeheartedly providing everything they could ever wish for."

"I can see that you are."

"I thank you for not standing in the way of that." Richard reached into his pocket and withdrew a photograph that he handed to Matthew. "If you ever feel inclined to change your mind, look at this and remember that you are not good enough for him."

He felt some guilt but not remorse. If their roles had been reversed, Richard could not imagine himself tolerating Matthew's position; whatever trauma war had inflicted on him, he could not entertain the thought of stepping back. They were very different men; perhaps Matthew was the better man, the honourable, selfless man, but Richard was a man who did not lose. A man who had earned and fought for everything he possessed; his prize would remain in his grasp, cherished and protected. Mary would not step out of line, he was almost certain of it; she had more pride than to pursue a man who did not appear to want her. He would take her to London before the New Year, they would attend the most exclusive parties, she would begin to enjoy everything he could engineer for her pleasure. She would forget, and Teddy would continue to love him unconditionally with nothing to dissuade him from doing so. Richard would have it all, and he would guard it with every resource at his disposal. She could turn a cold cheek to his kiss, display stark indifference in private, as long as she did not make him a fool. For now, this would do.

Matthew did not reply and allowed Richard to leave with no further words passed between them. He held the photograph without looking at it for a long time after the other man had left. When he finally cast his eye down over the portrait he knew that he would indeed think of Richard's words each time he took it into his hand. The pain in his leg that had persisted for much of the day seemed to surge anew as he smoothed his fingers over the photographs surface, he turned it over and saw Mary's handwriting across the back. He would like to frame it, place it beside his bed to look upon and be thankful for but this could not be. He would hide it, in a pocket, in a drawer, and feel only shame when he looked at it.


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: Now this chapter has been through several drafts so I really hope it is now fit for public consumption. It is a special bumper edition to thank all you lovely people who have read and/or reviewed and wish you a very Merry Christmas! Dedicated to my incomparable beta, Ariadne, who deserves a stupendous festive period because she is wonderful. Hope you all enjoy!_

* * *

><p><em>And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept: Untroubling and untroubled where I lie; The grass below-above the vaulted sky.<br>_

June, 1940

It takes everything I have ever possessed to enter the room, your father's hand tightly in mine. I cannot help but glance along the rows of beds – the injured young men, the shattered lives. Some have family gathered around them, whispered words amid a frantic hush. You are at the end, beside the nurse's desk, your bed surrounded by people in white coats. They turn to us as we approach, fading away as one man steps forward to greet us, his hand extended. I look beyond him, and you are propped up by pillows, unmoving, your head flexed backwards over a rolled towel. There is a tube in your nose, taped to the side of your face; your face is so very white. Matthew squeezes my hand, and I struggle to contain a flood of nausea as I try to focus on the doctor standing patiently in front of us.

"I am Dr Morris. You must be Captain Carlise's parents."

I nod, my mouth dry.

"Your son has sustained multiple internal injuries. He underwent an operation on the hospital ship and has had brief periods of consciousness since he arrived with us this morning. We believe he is also suffering from something we call 'wet lung of trauma' and we are employing the most advanced measures at our disposal."

"Will he live?" Matthew asks, his fingers digging into the back of my hand.

"I do not know, but we will do our very best."

_Do more, do more than your best._

I sit beside your bed and take your hand. I am vaguely aware of a continuing whispered conversation behind me between Matthew and the doctor, but all my attention is focused on you. On the sharp curve of your cheekbone, the dryness of your partly open lips and the soft sweep of your hair from your forehead. _My poor boy. _

"Teddy?" I venture. "Teddy, can you hear me?" And I am so desperate. "It's Mama."

I do not imagine the slight pressure applied to my hand by yours, and I grip back tightly with both hands, leaning in towards you.

"Oh my darling, you have been so brave, I am so proud of you."

I sense Matthew behind me, hanging back.

"Your father is here, Teddy," I say and Matthew rests his hand on my shoulder. "Will you open your eyes for us?"

For the first time I notice the noise, the rasping grunts of your breath and the way your chest moves only in sharp jerks. The nurse moves past me and attaches a thick pipe to the end of the tube in your nose; it whirrs and she holds the clear pipe as it rushes dark with blood.

"What is that?" I demand stupidly.

"He cannot clear his own secretions," Dr Morris informs me. "Better out than in."

"Does it hurt?" I raise your hand to my cheek and bow my head.

"No, we are managing any pain. He will breathe easier when the nurse has finished."

The doctor is right; the noise of your breathing seems to diminish. I recall the night I sat by your bedside all those years ago, as you were ravaged by influenza; I thought I would lose you then. You rallied, heroically and quickly as only children can, and a mere week later, I was struggling to keep you in bed and out of the stables. I can see your flushed little face and bright eyes now, hair tousled as I caught you struggling out of your night shirt and taking the breeches held out to you by the nanny you manipulated mercilessly. She, like many others, was powerless to resist your charm and powers of persuasion.

"Oh Mama," you protested as I eased the night shirt back over your head. "I'm quite alright. Samson is going to think I have died."

I flinched at the final part of the sentence, and you indulged me as I smoothed your hair and kissed you.

"I want to take him out before the hunt on Saturday."

"Teddy, my darling, you will not be riding out on Saturday; you have been terribly ill."

"Mama!" you said, a dark frown creasing your brow for a moment. "I cannot wallow away in bed, like a lazy… badger!"

"Badger?" I smiled despite myself.

"Oh you know what I mean!" You laughed, that bright brilliant laugh. "'In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody, but unbowed.' Invicutus, William Ernest Henley," you declared, proudly. "I cannot stay down for long, Mama!"

You had a spirit that could not be quashed. You _have _a spirit that will not be conquered. If only you would speak that verse to me now. You have always been so treasured, and I hope you have known that. Your grandmother, aunts and cousins are inconsolable. Sybil had to prise the telephone from Louisa's grasp and apologise as the sound of her sobs filled the receiver. You are impossible not to adore; if sheer love and willpower could bring you back to health then you would walk from this aptly named 'shock ward' right this instant.

A chair is provided and Matthew sits down beside me, his hand on my knee. There is a faint movement of your eyelids, the thin skin there almost translucent. My breath surges from my chest as the cerulean blue of your eyes is revealed.

"Mama?"

Your voice is a deep rasp, and almost immediately you begin to cough and your face reddens with what seems to be unbearable pain.

"Teddy!" I cry.

We stand hastily as the doctor and two nurses help you sit upright, tightening straps that are bound around your chest.

"We must administer another nerve block. Bring the screens please, Nurse. You girl, turn on the suction for goodness sake!"

Blood convulses from your lips, great ruby clots stark against the white bed linen. _Like pieces of flesh._ I feel quite faint and hang onto Matthew for support.

"Doctor! What is happening?" Matthew demands.

"I must ask you to step outside."

A nurse ushers us down between the beds, and the other patients and visitors watch us in silence. I am overcome and I cry against your father's chest, my hands in fists. I am oblivious to the people passing us in the corridor. We stand there for what seems like an age before we are summoned back by the nurse. _Do not tell me he is dead, do not tell me that. _Let me sooth you again as I did during those feverish nights of your childhood illness. Stroking your hair and whispering poems in your ear. _Oh! Thank you God, for a lovely day.__ And what was the other I had to say? I said "Bless Daddy," so what can it be? Oh! Now I remember it. God bless Me. _

"He is better, the pain is controlled, we will continue to apply suction to the lungs every twenty minutes. Please do not encourage him to speak," Dr Morris tells us at your bedside.

Your head is propped forwards now, and your eyes open, a small smile on your lips.

"Mama," you whisper and extend your hand.

"Oh Teddy, don't speak," I say and my voices breaks. "Don't say anything, darling."

"I dropped the gun," you croak, and your eyes are not quite focused, tears on their surface.

"Don't talk about it now, dear boy," Matthew says. "There is plenty of time; save your strength."

"I trod on a pheasant."

"A pheasant?" I frown and use my handkerchief to wipe the tears from your pale cheeks. "They have given you something for the pain, darling, so your thoughts will be muddled. Just rest; I shall stay right here."

"You are right, Mama, I am too small for the shoot."

I look up at Matthew and he moistens his lips as he meets my gaze. We think of that terrible day; surely you are not referring to _that _day. The day you were too small for the shoot, the day the unthinkable happened.

* * *

><p>February, 1924<p>

Mary had dismissed her maid and was replacing her jewellery inside the gilt edged box on her dressing table. She saw her own face in the mirror, her lips moving easily as she recounted the incidents of the day to her husband; namely the somewhat displeasing discovery of Nanny and one of the footmen in flagrante delicto in the closet under the servant's stairs. Richard laughed long and loud, mirth brimming in his eyes as Mary described the scene, she watched him with some disapproval but was willing to admit that it had been rather funny despite the terrible embarrassment heaped on the unfortunate lovers.

"Oh don't feel sorry for them, Mary, for goodness sake!" Richard said, a last amused shake of his head. "If they're foolish enough to get up to such a caper they deserve to be left red faced!"

"Well, Fred couldn't stay, Ridley has been complaining about him for months anyway," Mary said, turning from the dressing table.

"And Nanny?"

"I've given her a talking to."

"I'm sure you have, my dear," Richard smirked, loosening his tie. "She won't re-offend?"

"I doubt it. I mean besides anything else she left a mischievous five year old up to his own devices for goodness knows how long. She feels very guilty."

"You didn't find Teddy wearing your fur again did you?" Richard asked, still smiling.

"No, but I'm sure we'll find some other evidence of his lack of supervision at some stage."

"Hopefully not another suffocated mouse in a hat box!" Richard lent down and kissed her cheek.

"He misses the animals," she replied, allowing him to take her hands and draw her to her feet. "I accepted my mother's invitation."

"Oh?"

"I thought that, as we are returning to Haxby anyway, we could go up and join the shooting party at Downton this weekend. It will give Ridley time to draw the battle lines with Mrs Mortimer."

"Knowing that housekeeper she is probably sleeping in our bed in our absence."

"All the more reason to give her a weekend to ensure everything is as we left it," Mary smiled.

Richard kissed her, his mouth soft and warm and she let herself relax into his embrace. A twinge of guilt pricked at her heart - _Matthew and Lavinia will also be joining us, all the family together! _– her mother's oblivious mention of Matthew's name in her invitation had sent a knife twisting into Mary's stomach. They saw 'the Crawleys' as Richard called them so infrequently that Mary could not remember ever having shared a private word with Matthew in the last five and a half years. Lavinia was always at his side during the necessary family occasions and she was so sweet and engaging that it took all Mary possessed to not let the guilt show in a display of anguish on her face.

"Will the Crawleys be shooting?" Richard asked, as if he had read her mind.

Mary stiffened, extricating herself from his grasp.

"I expect Matthew will, I'm not sure Lavinia is much for country sports."

She had intended the reply to sound light and disinterested but suspected it came out in more of an uncomfortable rush. Richard stood back and surveyed her for a moment as she busied herself picking up a glass jar of hand cream, turning the smooth lid slowly in her hand with a forced idleness. Her eyes hovered expressionlessly on his face. She had nurtured and brought into fragile existence a family life that she had certainly never dreamt of but nevertheless found fulfilled her in unimagined ways. There was a great deal that lurked, unseen and unseemly at the peripheries of her mind but if Mary was anything she was practical and she was proud. They were a team, for better or worse and she rarely betrayed herself, rarely lowered her guard enough to spark anything of what made her husband dangerous.

"Have you given any more thought to my proposal?" He asked.

Mary's eyes flickered into life for a moment and she frowned.

"Why would you ask me that now?"

"Why not?"

She shook her head, replacing the jar on the dressing table and walking toward the bed. Richard reached out and caught hold of her arm, forcing her to meet his eyes once more.

"In the first instance, Richard, calling having a child 'a proposal' as if you are seeking to put in a bid for the acquisition of a rival newspaper, is not an altogether pleasing manner of phrasing."

He gripped her arm a little tighter and Mary felt that she had forgotten herself for a moment, too sharp, too quick, too close to the bone. He could still be cruel and quick to anger if thwarted; his interest in Teddy in particular waxed and waned and more often than not he remained cool and guarded around a child who seemed unaffected by tension that was sometimes so apparent. Mary thought this was Richard's way of ensuring she never became too comfortable, that she would not forget on whose side the scales fell.

"I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I have thought about it but I am simply not at all sure."

"Why must you be sure?" He replied, the skin around his jaw tense and taut.

"It is hardly a decision to be taken lightly."

"That strikes me as odd," Richard said and Mary saw a glint in his eyes that she now recognized mercifully rarely. "It strikes me as contradictory. It seems to me that you have already taken such a decision with some ease."

She shook off his arm and the spell broke.

"You know that is not true."

"No, of course. Teddy was a 'happy accident' although not entirely happy as I recall." He nodded and his eyes flashed. "I see why you would not wish to repeat such a mistake."

He was baiting her, she knew that. _Do not call my son a mistake. _Mary shook her head slightly and gave him a bright, hollow smile.

"I'm sure you are right, one must learn from the past."

Mary had learnt a great deal. She had learnt just how far she could push her husband, she had discovered that she would go to any lengths to protect her son and ensure his happiness; that she could begin to cultivate feelings for someone she never thought she could even grow to like. She was not beaten, it had taken time but a light inside her sought to shine once more, no matter the peculiar and cruel transgressions her husband had wrought on her in the past. Occasionally she was caught unawares, she forgot and allowed herself to dazzle in complete comfort beside him, the lies cloaking her so beautifully.

"I do not wish to argue over this, Mary," he said.

Mary could hear the 'but' and the words that were unsaid were all too clear - _but I will have my way. _

"Neither do I. Why don't you kiss Teddy goodnight?"

He watched her astutely and she felt pinned to the spot by his gaze.

"Say yes."

She had no more room in her heart, no more space to sacrifice; she could love no other child like she loved Teddy, she loved him for Matthew too. Richard was not a part of her, he was an essential component of her life but he operated quite separately from she and Teddy.

"Yes."

As she said the word she felt nothing but despair, and yet there was no other answer. This was her life, it was the only future she had and Teddy would not be able to re-live his childhood should she destroy everything now. She could not bear to think of that little boy ever feeling unloved or unwanted. She knew the undercurrent running beneath Richard's request, it was all too obvious – _give me a child and I will love your son. _

* * *

><p>Robert swung Teddy in such a large circle in the air that Mary thought for a moment that he would take flight. Teddy squealed in delighted hysteria, panting and breathless with excitement when he was replaced on terra firma.<p>

"Oh, Grandpapa! I _am _pleased to see you!"

"The feeling is more than mutual, my darling boy," Robert beamed, ruffling his grandson's hair. "Come along, let me take you to your Grandmamma; she is desperate to squeeze your cheeks."

"Oh!" Teddy said, raising his hands to his face instinctively and laughing.

"Well, I suspect that is the last we will see of Teddy today," Richard said as the child skipped away at Robert's side without a second glance in their direction.

"He loves being here," Mary smiled, taking Richard's proffered arm. "He enjoys being King of the Castle."

"I think he is quite used to that sensation. Our own little prince."

Mary glanced at him but the sarcastic raise of his eyebrow was not present. He caught her looking and surprised her by kissing her lightly on the lips.

"Don't start getting amorous, Richard," Mary said, but she smiled nevertheless.

"I thought perhaps we could make the most of our time before the rest of the party arrives."

"Did you?"

He kissed her again, harder this time, his fingers digging into her hips and drawing her tightly to him.

"Have I tempted you, my dear?"

"Yes I suppose you have," she replied, her hands against his chest.

He stole a feather light kiss to her neck, his lips grazing her smooth skin. Mary felt a small shiver of pleasure and she allowed her arms to fall over his shoulders. Far better that they were a united front; at least to him, to all outside eyes. Inside she was free to nurse her traitorous heart and jealously guard the portion that remained unsullied.

* * *

><p>"Matthew, welcome!"<p>

They were always so generous, so kind and supportive, and it made it harder so he stayed away. In Manchester, he could almost pretend he had no connection to this place at all. He smiled graciously, taking his cousin's warmly proffered hand, but his stomach lurched as the little boy stepped forward from behind his grandfather's legs.

"Say hello, Teddy," Robert smiled, picking the boy up.

"Hello!"

"Aren't you grown up!" Lavinia said as Teddy peeked at her shyly for a moment.

"I will be six years old in three months," he replied seriously, holding up his fingers to illustrate the point. "Six! That really is quite old, you know."

"It certainly is!"

He could see Mary in the child's serious brow and striking features, a darkly bewitching quality, his blue eyes standing out in contrast as he regarded Matthew with his mother's careful gaze. He was almost unbearable to look at.

"Cousin Matthew, you will come and see my trains now," Teddy declared as Robert lowered him to the ground.

Robert laughed indulgently, and Lavinia gave Matthew's arm an encouraging squeeze.

"By all means," she said. "I know Matthew would be very interested to see your trains."

Teddy took his hand, and Matthew felt he could cry. All the way up the stairs the child chatted, occasionally looking to him for a response but carrying on regardless if he didn't get one. The boy led him down the corridor and into the nursery where an elaborate train set was weaving its way haphazardly throughout the room.

"This one is Grandpapa's, the trains don't move by themselves," Teddy explained. "I have one of my own which is electric with real smoke and steam! I think this one is nicer though."

He handed Matthew a handsomely painted tin engine.

"You can be this one; it's usually Papa's one, but he won't mind."

Matthew swallowed the lump in his throat; he suspected 'Papa' would mind very much.

"It would be nice if Mama and Papa would come and play too," Teddy continued, seemingly unmoved by his companion's choked silence. "More people is better but they are lying down."

At this unpleasant revelation Matthew felt the sudden urge to clear his throat, and the noise came out as a harsh cough that caused Teddy to look up at him.

"Did you play with trains when you were a boy?"

"Yes," Matthew managed. "I did, but none as fine as this."

The child seemed to consider this for a moment as he coupled a coal tender to the back of his steam engine.

"Have you brought your children with you?"

"I don't have any children," he replied, trapped under that intensely bright gaze.

"Why not?"

Matthew was at a loss to reply to this direct question and was almost grateful when they were interrupted.

"Teddy."

"Papa!" Teddy turned, a wide smile on his face that forced a hole in Matthew's heart.

"Would you care to come for a ride in the motor to Ripon?" Richard asked, ignoring Matthew's presence crouched on the floor.

"Oh, yes!" Teddy replied enthusiastically before pausing for a moment to contemplate his playmate. "Will you be alright to play on your own for a while?"

Richard replied before Matthew had chance to offer a response.

"Cousin Matthew is quite used to playing alone, he does not mind. Come along, Teddy bear." Richard's pale eyes regarded Matthew coolly for a moment before he picked the boy up and carried him bodily from the room.

"I will be your friend again later!" Teddy called back.

Matthew sank down and leant against the wall, his arms resting on his knees, the old pain in his leg pinching and burning. He felt sick, and the photograph Richard had given him years ago scorched a hole in his pocket. How could he have answered Teddy's question? _I have no children because of you._ It was as if the Lord himself had decreed he would have no more children. _My heart is not in it. _Perhaps that was the reason Lavinia had still not borne a child, as if God knew that given one more child or ten, the pain and loss would not be salved. There was no replacing what he had lost. He felt Teddy's hand in his once more, the grip around his heart that tensed and contracted with each beat. He had almost lost his mind after the war and his heart fell by the wayside. Time had healed that agony, the trauma and nightmares eased and he could almost function normally, but his Achilles heel remained, absorbing all residual scars and persisting as a wound that was all too readily reopened.

Someone made a small noise in the doorway, and when he turned Mary was standing there, pale and composed.

"It is rather a mess in here. I must ask Nanny to clear away the train set before someone has an accident," she said, her tone belying an unnatural breeziness as she bent to pick up some of the discarded toys.

Matthew stood and she met his eyes briefly.

"You look well," she nodded. "Did Teddy drag you up here to play with him?"

"He didn't drag me. He is a charming child; you must be very proud."

His heart pounded painfully and his throat ached; she could only be more beautiful, and it had been so very long since they were alone together. The air seemed too full, cloying and heavy, a past swollen out of all proportion penning them in. On the last occasion, he had been little more than a bed-ridden shell of a man. What must she think of him now, after so much time?

"I am, thank you," Mary replied, busying herself disassembling a piece of track near the door.

He was silent, watching the smooth porcelain skin at the bend of her neck as she knelt on the floor with her back to him.

"Is this to be our fate? Polite conversation around the elephant in the room?" he asked and something cracked, a brief breath of air and the pinch of that which they could not speak.

She paused and her back straightened. When she turned, her face was strangely still.

"What else would you have us do, Matthew?" she asked, unwilling to be drawn through, to step outside of an act she had cultivated so beautifully.

"Are you happy?"

"Are you?" she shot back, shutting her eyes for a moment and frowning, a mannerism he knew so well. "We have made our bed."

"And that is the end of it." He did not know if this were a question or a statement.

"Why pretend otherwise?"

She had pretended otherwise, in her own imaginings, in the days after his return. She had turned and contorted every possible scenario until she felt that if he asked her to, she would run away, she _could _run away. Much of her consistently happy childhood had been spent contemplating running away, and Mary had always been able to be confident in the sure and certain feeling that come what may, she would triumph. No obstacle too great. It saddened her to think of that little girl now, a little girl who would surely have sneered at this adult woman trapped in a prison of her own making, trapped by expectation and duty. A false rebel.

"I have let you down, so very badly," Matthew said, and he extended his hand to help her to her feet.

"You have done what you thought right," she replied, taking his hand and releasing her fingers from his grasp quickly as she stood up.

"Mary!" he said, raising his voice, frustration pounding in the clench of his jaw as he glared back at her. "Don't be trite with me!"

She pushed the door shut quickly behind her.

"Keep your voice down, for God's sake. I do not want to talk about this now, and I am surprised you feel inclined to. This is the most you have said to me on the matter in six years." The words came out in a rush, spilling from her lips with an intensity she hadn't intended, a bitterness she did not realize was there.

"There is no excuse."

"I see. So now you plan to do what exactly? Do you not see that this situation remains impossible; there is no getting out of it, so why even speak of it?"

"You're angry," he said, passing his hand through his hair, his palm moist. "Oh God, I wish things were different, I wish…" he trailed off desperately, casting his eyes around the room for inspiration.

"There was nothing you could do then and there is nothing to be done now. When you married Lavinia you sealed our fate, and there was no way back."

She was _angry_; that particular emotion had probably always been there, but it had been hidden under so much else for so long. Six years ago she had mostly felt desperation at the situation they had found themselves in, and fear, overwhelming fear, and then it had all been swept away by the consuming grief of Matthew's apparent death. Richard had played his part, lacing her mind with doubt over those long, dark months. _One ill-advised romp._ She was tainted, the author of her own misfortune. Richard accepted her secrets where Matthew would not. She found herself thinking that all she had treasured in Matthew was what kept him from her; he had not taken her back.

"Do you think I would have married her if I'd known?" he demanded, biting his lip, unable to tear his eyes away from hers. "Do you? I heard nothing from you, nothing to suggest to me anything had really changed, and then I heard your marriage to Richard was going ahead. What did you expect me to think of that?" The colour was rising in his cheeks and he felt himself dangerously close to the edge.

"And if I had broken it off with Richard only for you to return and reject me?" she retorted, a vulnerability that was painful etched across her face.

He stepped back and covered his mouth with his hand for a moment; Mary saw he was shaking.

"You thought I would not stand by you? That I would walk away from you and our child?"

She looked down at her hands, balled into fists, and her composure crumpled. She shook her head slightly, unable to reply.

"You thought that little of me?" His voice was breaking, his very being tearing as she refused to return his gaze.

"I thought that little of myself," Mary replied finally, the last word coming out in a strangled cry.

He moved impulsively and took both her hands in his, pulling her towards him in one quick spontaneous motion. She could not resist and her very soul dissolved as heat flooded her body. Their lips met simultaneously and everything melted away around them as Matthew gripped her against him and she wrapped her arms around his lower back.

"Don't lets make the same mistake twice," she whispered into his mouth.

"Oh God, Mary," he replied, his voice deep and tremulous. "It was not a mistake."


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N: Apologies for the delay! And thank you all so very much for your interest, on tumblr and in reviews, I have been thrilled by it. A huge ginormous thank you to my wonderful beta for this part, she is marvellous and boy, does she make me laugh._

* * *

><p><em>Into my heart an air that kills.<em>

June, 1940

The doctor is not hopeful. He tells me that you almost died during your journey here; that they have performed a bronchoscopy since you arrived but that blood and fluid continues to come from your lungs. You are too weak to undergo surgery to remove the remaining shrapnel in your back although the bullet has been extracted. _Please do try and prepare yourselves. _I cannot prepare myself as disaster looms over me, a flapping black shadow threatening to consume me, drag me down somewhere I will not emerge from. It is much worse than I thought. Yet you do not look so very bad, pale and weak, yes, but there is light in your eyes and this gives me hope. I will admit that I do not know you as well as I would like to but there is something else about your demeanour too. You talk of guns and a pheasant at your feet and Mary tries to hush you but even as you fall silent I can feel the force of what you are trying to express. I feel the day you must be referring to surround me. I remember that weekend for many reasons, and as things crashed beyond control or comprehension in it's aftermath I clung to the few memories that had caused me to think that for one blissful moment life could be changed. Your hand in mine and your mother in my arms once more. What brief heaven.

I do not know how I am going to persuade Mary to leave your side. I sense that visiting time is drawing to a close and that we are being giving an unprecedented amount of leeway. They know who I am and one of the nurses addresses me as 'Your Lordship' a title that, after all these years, I still find myself surprised and slightly embarrassed to hear, as if I expect to see your grandfather standing behind me. I do not want to leave either, I don't think I can stand the weight of uncertainty that will fall once you are released from our watch, once we are on the other side of the ward door, deaf and blind to what may unfold beyond it. If something happens will they do all they can to save you? Will we be woken in the dead of night by a dreadful, stilted telephone call? _Your son is dead. _I feel almost as if as long as I stay here, willing you to live then you cannot die. This is ridiculous, I realize.

We left your grandmother, not entirely stunned into silence, to be comforted by her maid. She heard you were injured and she barely flinched when she saw my hand in your mother's.

"I think it is a story for another time," she managed, her voice choked, a brief shake of her head as I began to speak. "Tell Teddy just how much I love him."

She will come here, all your family will come and crowd around your bed; they are not prepared to lose you either. You are the heart, the centre, the uniting force in a family that has been in turns fractured and fearfully insulated. I watched you, that last evening before you left for war, and I so longed to pin you to your seat. _You must not go! _I imagine what your reaction would have been had I done that, you would always have gone because you would always do what was right. I wish I could say the same. I hope life gives you a chance to make mistakes; not the fearful, unforgivable mistakes I have made but merely turns from the path that would only bring you back more strongly to a truer meaning for it all. We cannot really know what is right unless we have done wrong.

You open your eyes now as your mother cleans the blood from around your mouth. You look straight at me for the first time since we arrived here.

"Thank you for coming," you say.

"Of course I came," I reply, a stiff lump blocking my throat.

"I'm going to fetch some blankets," Mary says, touching my cheek before getting up and leaving me to move my chair closer to the bed.

I do not know what to say to you, I do not know where to begin.

"Don't tell, Mama."

My chest heaves and I take your hand.

"Teddy," I begin but you shut your eyes and shake your head as much as you are able.

"Promise me, don't tell her how bad it is. Please."

The effort of speaking exhausts you and your hand grows limp in mine. Tears sting my eyes and I clench my teeth so hard that a sharp surge of pain courses through my temple.

"I promise."

I clasp your hand tighter.

"I love you so very much, Teddy."

"I know," you reply and you open your eyes, a small sad smile on your lips. "Good night, Papa."

I cannot help myself then, I am beyond all sense of self-control and I feel my face splinter as a heaving sob comes from my mouth. You are that small boy once more. I feel the wet dew of the grass underneath me as I hold you in my lap under a million stars. You were so limp and weak and I was afraid, so afraid that when I took you outside you would die in my arms. Grow stiff and cold, the softness of your skin turning to glass as you shattered in my grasp. I begged, I pleaded with anyone who would listen and you survived the night, against all odds. Death's cold hand wrenched from yours, and one more chance that I did not take. I feel now that I may have run out of chances, that this will be the last time I hold your hand and wish I had been a braver man. _Do not let it be so._ Darkness is gathering outside the long window behind your bed and in the dim light I watch your chest rise and fall. The tube that is stuck to your face has bright flecks of blood inside it.

"You may visit again in the morning," says a gentle voice behind me and I look up into the face of a young nurse.

"Would it be at all possible for me to stay?" I ask and her face tenses sympathetically.

"I really don't think that would be allowed," she says uncertainly.

"What isn't allowed?" Mary says, returning with three folded blankets in her arms.

"Visiting time has already ended," the nurse replies, flushing.

Your mother turns on her, not unkindly but completely unwilling to compromise. Those beautifully crafted eyebrows arch formidably as she purses her lips. In that moment she is just as I remember.

"We will not be leaving."

A brief discussion with the Matron ensues and I watch your mother elegantly decline further debate as she hands me a blanket and sits back down in her chair beside you. I realize we are receiving an unfair advantage purely due to our status but I do not care. I will sit here all night and watch you sleep; watch every small movement you make through every minute of every hour until you prove everyone wrong. I would put myself in your place a thousand times over, I would relive my darkest moments for all eternity; just let there be more time.

* * *

><p>February, 1924<p>

Richard watched as Teddy stood in front of the tailor's mirror, his little chest puffed out as he beamed at the reflection of himself clad in Harris tweed. He pulled the flat cap down until it was over his eyes, tilting his head back to look from under it at Richard standing behind him.

"You look very fine," he said, giving the hovering tailor a nod.

"Oh, can't I keep it on?" Teddy pleaded as the tailor began to unbutton the front of the jacket.

"No, you will wear it tomorrow."

"Very well," Teddy replied, removing the flat cap with a flourish, his hair tousled. "Are they just the same as your hunting clothes, Papa?"

"Of course," Richard reached to smooth the boy's hair.

"Do you think Mama will be pleased?" He asked as he allowed the tailor to dress him in the clothes he had arrived in.

"I am sure she will."

Richard knelt down and buttoned up the front of the child's navy woolen coat as the tailor wrapped the clothes in paper. He imagined Mary would be rather surprised, Teddy's clothing was her domain and she dressed him impeccably in the latest and most expensive children's fashions. He had put a great deal of thought and research into ensuring he bought Teddy the most appropriate shooting garments, acutely aware that he still had much to learn about country sports and upper class etiquette at such occasions. He did not wish to look foolish; as resentful as he was of many of the Crawleys' ways, it mattered to him that they did not always regard him as an uncultured interloper.

Richard stepped back and watched the boy rock on his heels for a moment, hands thrust into his coat pockets, smiling up at him. He could not help but be proud of Teddy, to be considered his father; he really was the most handsome child and drew frequent admiring glances and comments in public. He was very like Mary, the same fine cheekbones and elegant jaw line, the same exquisite brow. Richard chose to ignore the bright blue of Teddy's eyes as he looked at him from beneath long dark lashes. He bent down and placed the cap on the boy's head.

"Thank you ever so much for the clothes, Papa," Teddy grinned, kissing his cheek.

"I am glad you like them. Now, shall we go back?"

"Well," Teddy paused, "perhaps we could go to a tea room? For a cake?" He added hopefully.

"Do you do that with Mama?"

"Oh yes, or a hotel. I should like to do that with you."

"Are you not eager to get back to Downton?" Richard asked, taking Teddy's hand, the package underneath his other arm.

"Of course," Teddy considered for a moment, "but I am having fun with you, Papa."

For what more could he ask? Teddy swung slightly on his hand as Richard instructed the waiting chauffeur to take them to the nearest hotel or tea room. In the back seat of the car the boy clasped his hands on his lap and fidgeted in his seat, his tongue poking from between his teeth in anticipation. This trip was clearly a great boon for Teddy and an unpleasant taste clung in Richard's mouth as he thought of the unkind things he had said in the past with the sole purpose of hurting Mary, of making her feel guilty.

"Cousin Matthew is sad," Teddy announced suddenly.

"Oh?" Richard ventured after pausing to digest this random observation.

"Yes. He has a sad face."

Richard looked at the back of the child's head as he peered out of the window, his hair curled slightly at the neck, tickling the collar of his coat. Children are perceptive, this particular child especially so and Richard's forehead prickled as he thought of the times he had coolly dismissed Teddy in Mary's presence. He had not thought of how this might affect the boy and perhaps it hadn't, perhaps it was not too late to repair the start of any damage.

"I will need to go back to London next week, you could come to my office with me. It will be your office one day, if you would like it to be."

Teddy turned back to face him.

"I would like to sit in your chair and spin around," he declared, seriously, "but my job is to look after Mama."

Richard smiled back at him and tweaked his chin gently between his thumb and forefinger as the car pulled up outside a hotel close to the centre of Ripon.

"Let us be partners in that business," he said.

Teddy nodded and threw his arms around Richard's neck spontaneously, his soft little face buried against the man's cheek.

"I do love you, Papa."

* * *

><p>Mary turned and dismissed the maid after she added the final pins to her hair. Teddy was sitting cross legged on the bed, clad in a pair of red tartan pajamas and dressing gown, a train in his hands.<p>

"You are beautiful, Mama," he said.

Mary knelt up onto the bed beside him and took his face in her hands, kissing his brow.

"Thank you, darling boy," she smiled. "Is that a new train?"

"Yes, Papa bought it for me in Ripon. We had tea in a hotel, Papa let me have a piece of every single cake!"

"I'm surprised you were not ill!" Mary raised an eyebrow, concealing her surprise at this outing as best she could, regarding her son as he turned the train over between his fingers.

"Could I come down, just for a little while?" Teddy asked as his mother stood in front of the mirror and gave her gown a final appraisal.

"I'm sorry, darling. Nanny will be waiting, I will kiss you goodnight and see you in the morning."

In the nursery Mary kissed Teddy and stood in the doorway to watch him kneel beside the bed, his little dark head bowed as he said his prayers in clear enthusiastic tones. She leaned against the door frame for a moment. She had stood in this room mere hours ago as the bright lines of truth had sliced through her heart, a flickering ignition of a fire that they had never been able to control. The situation remained the same, and yet she felt lighter, the raw heat of their conversation swelling in her breast as the poison was drawn from the wound. They were consumed by each other once more and the division that had grown between them crumbled into a dangerous and heady passion that was all too easy to rekindle. There were no plans forged, no promises made, not then. He had held her with such intensity that she knew they had reached another fork in the road. As they had stepped apart, breathless and trembling, she had felt as if she would like to make the world go away, to leave them be; to give them just one pure moment of peace.

_The day is past and over. All thanks, O Lord, to Thee! O Jesus, keep me in Thy sight. And save me through the coming night. Amen._

Richard was behind her as she turned away from the door and her thoughts jarred as he offered her his arm. He was always behind her. _He did not know, he could not_. She would have to be so very careful. He frowned a little but made no comment as she smiled stiffly. Mary thought of the dinner party the night Matthew had announced his marriage to Lavinia and she felt her composure this night was just as fragile, the truth so close to the surface; the potential for disaster just as great. She fought to prevent her eyes straying to Matthew as they mingled during pre dinner drinks, the walls of the room seemed to make the grand space small and stifling as yet another of her parents' dreary guests sought her out for conversation. Mary smiled graciously, Richard never far from her side, his hand ready at the small of her back.

"I fear it may take all my energy to maintain an inane smile this evening," Richard said, leaning in towards her ear.

"Yes," Mary replied, her hand moving to adjust an earring as she avoided eye contact with another circling guest. "I am not feeling quite up to it."

"Say that a little louder," he grinned. "Lay the ground work for an early escape on medical grounds."

"Mm," Mary mused, her eyes flickering distractedly.

Her mind was full of Matthew, of that moment together mere hours earlier, of his hot firm kiss as the years collapsed beneath them and they plunged once more to the ground. Lavinia was close by and Mary turned away as guilt soured inside her stomach.

"Mary."

She was forced to turn and smile as Lavinia joined them.

"What a beautiful gown," the other woman said earnestly.

"Thank you," Mary replied, glancing at her husband and feeling the need to add: "Richard brought it back from Paris."

"How wonderful, you always look so elegant."

"My wife is invariably the most beautiful woman in any room; in London, Paris or indeed Downton," Richard said, his hand slipping around Mary's hip as she rolled her eyes slightly in humility.

"You ensure I am always the most extravagantly dressed certainly," she said, and there was a sharpness to her tone, causing Richard's eyes to shift over her face briefly.

"Matthew and I would love to go to Paris," Lavinia added as Matthew joined them. "Do you have plans to take a trip there again soon?"

Mary tensed at the vague suggestion that they might make up a foursome for some sort of European excursion. The very prospect seemed to be ghastly foreshadowing of a future she did not wish to contemplate, the continuance of a life in dangerously close proximity to Matthew, strung up in their secret, the truth a stolen whisper.

"Oh, I don't know, I imagine the next year may see us otherwise engaged." Richard's hand tightened around her waist possessively.

"Really? What are your plans?" Matthew asked directly.

"Richard, I wonder if you might tell us what to make of our new Prime Minister," Violet interjected, summoning him with a wave of her hand to where she was sitting.

Relief washed over Mary at the interruption. She could not bear to hear Richard speak of their 'plans,' _his_ plans; another child, a family that would squeeze shut every last avenue of escape. There would be no baby, she must tell him, she could not do it, she must escape. She looked at him sadly, as he humoured her grandmother's conservative views. He had done everything to sever Matthew from her soul and yet her husband held no sway over her heart. She felt cruel and yet he was the last person who would ask for her sympathy, and had he not been unthinkingly cruel to her? _Because he loves me._ Her eyes finally moved to Matthew as Lavinia joined a conversation with Isobel and her mother.

"You must be quite accustomed to entertaining," he said, eyeing those within hearing distance.

"I'm not sure how entertaining I am," Mary replied with a tense smile. "A decorative supporting act perhaps."

"You are a great deal more than a decoration," he replied, lowering his voice, turning towards her so his face was hidden from the rest of the room.

Richard wanted nothing more than to tell Matthew, verbalize his sworn oath that he would never relinquish this family. That he would never make the mistakes his rival had made. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Matthew and Mary were now locked in a private conversation, their bodies tilted close to one another. Jealousy began to fire and he felt a nerve in his temple twitch – _do not think you can have her back, she is mine, I have made her mine _– he challenged himself to witness a single brush of her flesh with Matthew's hand. If he touched her just once then all bets would be off, he would not be able to rein himself back.

Matthew felt his eyes linger on Mary's lips, his gaze quivering down to her neckline and he had very few thoughts, and even fewer plans. All he knew was that he was alive and something like madness threatened to reclaim him, that same complete, intoxicating desire that had taken hold of him upstairs, as they had staggered slightly under the weight of their mutual passion, Teddy's toys trampled underfoot.

"I can never let you go again," his words were almost a low groan and Mary felt light headed, so much so that she swayed slightly where she stood.

Matthew reached out to steady her and his hand rested for a moment on the curve above her hip.

_All is lost. _The scales had fallen from Richard's eyes and he saw, he saw very clearly, even as Violet continued to talk in his ear, he saw all that he held so tightly fall through his fingers as mere sand, grains of matter returned to an earth that cracked beneath his feet. In Mary's eyes he saw all he had sought to extinguish, all that had driven him to the brink of madness. They remained unvanquished. There would be a terrible fight, he would tear her to shreds before he gave her back to him, he would rip that beautiful flesh to pieces. Matthew was not the sickened opponent he had been, and when he turned back to the party he caught Richard's eye and held his gaze, a blade both straight and sharp spearing his soul. Dinner was announced and as Matthew fell away to his wife's side Richard let an uncontrolled sneer disfigure his lips. They walked to the dining room and Richard swallowed a bitter taste that threatened to pervade every sense.

"You're rather flushed," he said, as he pushed in Mary's chair at the dinner table. "Are you quite well?"

"I am perfectly well, thank you."

She glanced at him and the skin on the back of her neck burned, the hard corners of his mouth and sharp edge in his eyes roamed over her face and she knew the game, so briefly replayed, was up.

"Are you looking forward to the shoot tomorrow?" Robert asked, seated to Richard's other side.

"I am, as is Teddy."

"Will he be joining us? Well, that is a milestone, he is much the same age I was when my father first took me out shooting."

"What's this?" Cora asked mildly.

"Teddy will be attending the shoot tomorrow," Richard replied and a murmur of approval went up around the table.

Mary tensed beside him, no such discussion having passed between them on the matter.

"Do you think that's wise?" Matthew asked.

Richard paused long enough for an air of discomfort to settle over the guests.

"I do."

"I think he is rather too young," Matthew couldn't help himself and the curve of his jaw stung, his fingers tensed on the table.

"I don't think it is any of your affair, do you?"

The challenge in his eyes was undeniable and they were so close to the narrow ravine, the unspeakable truth. Dangerously close. Richard willed the other man to ruin himself, to dash himself against the rocks.

"I am merely offering an opinion," Matthew continued.

"It is not one I care hear."

"I am sure there is no need to argue the point. Robert survived his first shoot, physically and psychologically unscathed, at much the same age," Violet interjected, eyeing the two men.

"Teddy will be with his father, I think it goes without saying that I will keep him from harm."

"Of course," Cora concurred uneasily, glancing around the table briefly and shooting her husband a look that called for support.

"I daresay five may seem young but it is never too early to engage in country pursuits. Teddy is already becoming an excellent rider and I am sure he will prove a good shot," Robert smiled and paused to allow conversation around the table to resume.

Matthew watched Mary, her eyes on her plate and for one wild moment he wished to over turn the entire table, shatter every glass, topple every piece of china. He could hear Lavinia talking to his mother, about their home, the antiques she had bought from London, every empty word rang inside his head. Every malignant lie swelled and pressed beneath his skin.

He thought of the little boy asleep upstairs, his pure heart pumping blood through a body possessed only of innocence, his small face peaceful in repose. On the first night in the POW camp, Matthew had sat, his back against a piece of corrugated metal sheeting, a ragged tarpaulin flapping over his head in the makeshift tent. There were other men either side of him, he did not know them but he felt every twitch of their muscles as they shook against the cold, rattling inside empty hope. He had prayed for salvation, and he had prayed for Mary, that she would carry on for them both and she had. It crushed him to think she believed that he did not love her enough to forgive her anything, that she had not trusted the words in his letter. _I will not let you down again._

Mary could hear the hiss of words Richard had yet to utter, she could feel the hand that would close around her wrist as soon as they were alone. She felt him push her to the floor once more, rage burned into his face as he tore the last shred of Matthew's voice from her hand. Matthew had not returned, not until now, and Richard knew it. He knew that every small tender word and moment that had passed between them since their marriage meant nothing in the face of Teddy's father.

Richard watched her exquisite profile as she spoke to her neighbor, and he felt a peak climax inside his heart and he was not finished, not quite destroyed. He loved her, how he loved her, with an obsessive love that proliferated at speed throughout his body until he felt himself gripped, as if by the terminal stages of illness. She must see, she must see that he would do anything to keep her. He would expose the deepest recesses of his heart, let her cut out all that was black; as long as she would stay. He must threaten, he must frighten but then she must see that all he did was for her, for the love of her and then he would never hurt her again, if she would just see.

"Come with me," Richard said in a low hiss, as they left the dining room. "Come with me now or I will embarrass your parents beyond anything they could ever imagine."

She went. Not daring to turn back as he walked behind her up the stairs.

In the bedroom he shut the door as Mary stood opposite him, very still, her face ashen.

"I'm sorry, Richard." She managed. "Despite my reservations you have not been a bad husband and believe it or not I had no desire to hurt you."

"How magnanimous of you," he replied softly and she thought there was a great deal more than anger in his eyes. "Must I release you now?"

She did not reply.

"Because I will not. I do love you, Mary and I believe I have kept my word. I will not beg."

Mary shook her head, her eyes hovering over his face.

"Oh, Richard, it is tearing us all apart. Why hold on?"

"Then I will keep the pieces of you," he stepped forward and took her hand.

"And if I don't want to be broken?" She replied. "If I want to live a complete life?"

"I will give you my whole life."

She had never seen him so honest, so raw, he would not beg but his eyes pleaded.

"I do not want it." Mary said, closing her eyes as if in pain. "I never did."

His hand tightened around hers so she felt one of her knuckles click.

"So you have no need for me now. This time Matthew will be your Perseus?"

She felt him twist her arm as he forced her back onto the bed.


	14. Chapter 14

_A/N: Two updates in a week, I am (or more accurately my wonderful stupendous beta is) on fire! Thank you all so very much for your overwhelming response to the last part, you are spurring me on to the finish!_

* * *

><p><em>Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires.<em>

February, 1924

Once in the drawing room Matthew noticed that both Mary and Richard had gone. Lavinia was talking to him yet he couldn't help but allow his eyes to stray over her shoulder. Violet appeared in his line of vision, raising her eyebrows and tilting her head to indicate he should come over to her. At that moment Isobel appeared and took Lavinia's arm, drawing her into a conversation with another of the guests, allowing Matthew to slip away and be guided by Violet into a quiet corner. Her eyes studied his face appraisingly and Matthew felt a blush begin to tinge his cheeks as she pursed her lips and shook her head slightly. _Oh God, what is she going to say_, he thought desperately.

"Matthew," she began, "I will not ask for an explanation and I will certainly not speak of this to anyone else. What I will ask is that you go, at once, and see Mary."

He frowned and moistened his lips, his heart beating rather too fast.

"Where is she?"

"I saw her go with Richard, upstairs," she laid her hand on his arm. "There was a time when Cora and I feared for Mary's safety, I did not realize then quite what would drive him to such behavior but it has become plain to me since. I feel that it is your responsibility to prevent it, that may be unfair but there you are."

"Cousin Violet, I am not quite sure what it is that you mean," Matthew replied carefully as his stomach filled with ice.

She inclined her head, a sigh hovering around her mouth.

"I see a great deal. You do not get to my advanced stage of existence without knowing something of the secrets that are often, when one looks closely, poorly hidden."

"I…" Matthew began to speak quietly but she waved her fingers, her expression pained. "But what is it I must prevent?" He asked.

"I did not like what I saw in Richard's eyes tonight and I would not like to see a repeat of such unpleasantness."

"A repeat?" There was a ringing sound in Matthew's ears.

"We surmised," Violet said, lowering her voice still further and leaning in towards Matthew, "that Richard had flown into a rage."

"When was this?"

He had barely heard the answer before he left the room.

He was doused in rage, inflamed by it so that he could barely process a coherent thought. He flew up the stairs and strode down the corridor, taking the knob of the door and bursting unceremoniously into the room. Mary was on the bed and Richard was looming over her, his hands holding hers either side of her head. She was crying, almost silently through clenched teeth, her dress ripped from her shoulders. Matthew slammed the door behind him and seized Richard by the back of his collar, dragging him around and drawing him from the bed. The other man sensed what was to come but did not move quickly enough as Matthew drew back his fist and felt it connect with a wet splinter to his opponent's jaw. Mary gasped and scrambled backwards up the bed, pulling her gown down over her legs and pressing herself to the headboard. Richard rolled over on the floor, clutching his mouth as Matthew stood over him, his face crimson.

"Get up."

Richard took hold of the end of the bed and pulled himself to his feet, wiping his lip with the back of his hand and examining the blood that smeared his skin. He looked at Matthew.

"Bravo. Right on cue."

Matthew could not speak; such energy was being expended in suppressing the desire to continue his attack.

"The worm has turned. Although if you don't mind," Richard continued, slightly breathless from the scuffle, "my wife and I have some matters to resolve."

"You will not touch her again."

"I will do as I wish," he paused. "Unless of course you would like to go downstairs and announce to those assembled; Mary's parents, your wife, your mother, any number of well to do strangers, that sweet little Teddy is your bastard. I'm sure they'll be delighted; spare none of the titillating details."

Matthew grabbed Richard's shirt with both hands at the collar.

"Here we are again," Richard taunted. "What a tiresome carousel."

Matthew drew him closer so their faces were inches apart, so he could smell the wine on the other man's breath, the malice in his words.

"I could kill you."

"Matthew!" Mary said desperately.

"Step back whilst you are still able."

"I will not. Not this time," Matthew was shaking, unblinking, sweat running in rivulets down the side of his face.

"Very well. I will telephone my lawyer at first light and begin proceedings," Richard replied and the tension in Matthew's arms relaxed minutely, disbelievingly. "Of course my main stipulation will be that I have sole custody of Teddy and that, due to her unpredictable state of mind and questionable character, his mother must have no contact with him."

The air crashed from Matthew's lungs and he released Richard as on the bed Mary gave a cry of horror, covering her mouth with her hand.

"Would you do that to her? Be the reason she loses her son?" Richard asked, smoothing back his hair.

Matthew could not reply, watching the muscle that twitched at the other man's temple, the hard set of his eyes. This was no bluff and he did not doubt for a second that Richard would follow through with his threat. He turned to Mary and there was only despair in her eyes. He could not focus, he could not think, the obstacles reformed and surged anew in front of them and it was as if life dissolved around him. He was being asked, not asked, _forced,_ to let her go again and he felt the same powerless rage as that night six years ago when he and Richard had fought over Mary in the hall way_._ He glanced back at her for a moment and as her eyes held his he was torn apart by that dull acceptance. She shook her head slightly.

"Well?" Richard challenged.

"I will be watching you," Matthew said and Mary hardly recognized the twist of his face as he spoke. "And I will be waiting for my opportunity."

"There will be no such opportunity."

* * *

><p>Mary fell into a display of feigned sleep almost immediately, her face buried into the pillow, tension evident in every muscle. Had he not held Teddy as a weapon she would have stormed from the room, a sickening crash as she was reunited with Matthew before his eyes, as she was spirited from his grasp. And yet thanks to a devastating threat he held on. He held fast to her even as she recoiled further from his touch. The blood continued to rush in his ears and as he held up his hands he saw they still shook; his lip was swollen, a rip to the collar of his shirt. He looked at his face in the full length mirror; he continued to win, yet it felt as if he had lost. It felt as if he had been so close, so tantalizingly near to a chink of light, a door ajar to Mary's heart, only to have that man, that phantom, enrapture her once more. Richard lowered his head, a sour frost curling around inside his mouth. He unbuttoned his clothes with some difficulty, his fingers and thumbs seeming too large and unwieldy on the fastenings. Outside the room he could hear the sounds of the other guests coming to bed. Another noise caused him to pause, the sound of a soft, quiet sob and he directed his gaze immediately to Mary but she was silent; her face swathed in shadow, her breathing slow and regular, a spent slumber. If she were not really asleep she was acting it rather well and Richard frowned, perhaps he was imagining things; that would not be entirely surprising, he was rather more shaken than he had realized. The noise came again and this time he was almost sure it came from near his feet, surely it was not that blasted Labrador, a dog that would have been all too keen to bite him during his fracas with Matthew.<p>

Richard crouched down and peered under the bed, it was dark but towards the back he could see a faint outline that was certainly not the aforementioned pet. He felt his stomach churn – _oh no, please no _– he cleared his throat a little.

"Teddy," he whispered, extending his hand. "Come out, Teddy, it's alright."

The little boy looked up, removing his arms from around his knees.

"Papa?" he whispered back, the word stuttering from his mouth between gasps.

"Yes, come."

The child slowly crawled out on his hands and knees. His face was tear stained, his cheeks flushed and he clambered quickly into Richard's lap, clinging to him like a small animal. He buried his face against Richard's chest and his little hands sought to hold onto his forearm.

"What were you doing under there?" Richard asked.

"I… wanted to surprise you and Mama," Teddy stammered, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. "I had to cover my ears!"

Richard carried him from the room and back to the nursery where Nanny slept on, oblivious to the fact that her charge had given her the slip. He pulled the quilt up beneath Teddy's chin and kissed his forehead. He thought of their outing, of Teddy grinning at him, a napkin sticking out from his collar and cake crumbs around his mouth. The child's eyes were very wide now and the flush of his skin had given way to a pale and uncertain countenance. A thud of misery beat against Richard's chest and he could not trust himself to speak or stay any longer. When he glanced back Teddy was watching him go, raising his hand in a sad little wave.

* * *

><p>June, 1940<p>

When I wake I see you both beside me, the blanket is pulled up high and your graceful neck is arched to one side as you sleep in the battered wing backed chair. All ghosts have fled your face and you seem almost as if you are from another world. As a child I recall pausing before waking you. I would climb into your bed before light had reared on the horizon and stolen its way across the sky with fingers of fire. I would watch your face and think how you could be any age at all, that you did not look like anyone's mother, so composed and elegant as if a worry had never crossed your brow. My own beautiful mother. I wish you to sleep on, undisturbed and unpunished.

He sleeps too, rigidly, and I see his pain in the frown that remains even in slumber. I wish I could take away that pain, I wish to make it so it had never been. He has a sad face, he always did, a face that spoke of loss with no words, of the road not taken; it has indeed made all the difference. I do not know him, I wish for a little more time to discover who he is.

I hear the soft moans of the other men in the ward, no parents to watch over them as they groan and shift battered and deformed bodies and minds around and around. I have my mind, it has come back to me in whispers, in a clarity I recall having experienced before but thought I never would again. Perhaps this is the drugs they give me or maybe it is something else. Perhaps I am moving on, not sinking, my little boat untethered from the shore, my clothes dry and warm once more.

_I lift up my soul._

The witching hour approaches and a man cries out loudly, a shriek unnatural to the ear, a bird shot down in flight. You do not stir but my father does. He jerks in his seat, a spasm sending his eyes open in a burst of fever. He gasps, seeking air. The blanket falls from his chest and he clasps it between his hands as he looks at me. I look back and I see his face relax. _I will not cry out, Papa. _He moves to the edge of his chair and takes my hand in the gloom, a light at the nurse's desk is switched on and a beam reaches his face. I see myself a little, and a hand reaches though time, through passions spent, through duty and betrayal.

"I am here." He says.

"That is enough," I reply and feel his hand tighten around mine.

"Is it?" He asks. "I think it is nowhere near enough."

"It must be."

"Oh, Teddy, I have no heart for this." He says and he looks away, his face tenses for collapse, his words whisper from clenched teeth.

"You are here, Papa, and we are together." It is all I have wanted, it will be the last thing I will need.

I cough and I know that something thicker and more bitter than saliva stains my chin. He uses your handkerchief to wipe it away.

_I go and prepare a place for you._

* * *

><p>February, 1924<p>

Teddy cut his egg inexpertly into smaller and smaller ragged morsels, distributing them around the plate in a random pattern. He swung his legs beneath the table, faster and faster until he felt his mother place a gentle warning hand on his thigh. _Mama does not look well this morning,_ Teddy thought, _not at all well_. He was wearing his shooting clothes: plus fours, spats, a waistcoat, but much of the joy garnered from these items the previous day seemed to have run away like the yolk splitting on the plate, congealing and smearing. Teddy looked at the adults around the table, their mouths chewing slowly, expressions varying from idle enjoyment to the concentrated frown of his father.

Richard caught Teddy's eye and offered him a small smile, which the boy returned without enthusiasm. Something heavy clung in the child's chest, a discomfort and an unpleasantness at the confusing nature of the world. A world which should remain constant, his parents unassailable stalwarts in even the most uncertain situations. He could not begin to understand and he could still feel the fibres from the carpet tickling his nose, the stinging friction of the pile pressed to his cheek. He wanted to understand, to know the world was still a safe place.

"What is a bastard?"

Teddy's voice rang out and the clattering to a halt of cutlery signaled a deathly silence amongst the large breakfast party. One of the ladies let out a small gasp and used her napkin to cover her mouth as if she may be forced to repeat the terrible word.

"That is not a word we use, Teddy," Robert said firmly, with an apologetic nod to his guests.

"Where have you heard such a thing?" Cora demanded, her eyes wide.

"Why from Papa!"

Every pair of eyes turned to look at Richard and he swallowed his mouthful of food self consciously, dabbing the corner of his mouth around the tender bruise that had risen there.

"I do apologize," Mary said and Richard watched her in surprise. "Richard does carry on some heated business exchanges and Teddy is often a little keen to over hear. Such discussions are not for children."

Mary smiled, a thin, hard smile avoiding Matthew's gaze, which like every other in the room was now directed at her.

"Quite so," Richard concurred. "I must remember to moderate my language."

"Clearly you must," Robert said, regarding his son in law with displeasure. "I do not wish to hear such words in any circumstance and especially not from the nursery."

"Is it something very _bad_?" Teddy persisted, his hands plucking nervously at the tablecloth.

"Hush now," Mary leant in towards him. "It is not something for you to worry about, my darling."

As everyone began to congregate at the front of the house after breakfast, Mary fussed with Teddy's clothing, smoothing his lapels and straightening his tie. The child's eyes looked up into hers and she felt a plunge of guilt. Did Teddy know that word had referred to him? Did he recall it from months previously during an argument she had had with Richard, had it worried and disturbed him night after night since then?

"I am worried you are too small for the shoot," she said, stroking his cheek. "Are you quite sure you want to go? You could stay with Grandmamma?"

"No, I want to come. I will be with Papa, and you won't be far away will you?"

"No I will be watching. If you're quite sure?"

"Quite sure!" Teddy declared determinedly.

"Ready, are we?" Robert asked, walking over to them with Richard. "This is your gun, Teddy, I shall teach you how to hold it and all the various rules you must follow."

Teddy looked in awe at the small bore shot gun in his grandfather's hand. He grinned at him, the discomfort of the morning beginning to dissolve as his stomach clenched with excitement. He took Richard's hand, giving Mary a smile as they moved off, the women walking behind. Rosamund was talking to Mary but her aunts words faded before reaching her ear as she watched Teddy's small form, walking quickly to keep up between Richard and Robert. Matthew was striding ahead, talking to the gamekeeper; he glanced back briefly and saw Teddy, the child's face bright with enthusiasm.

"Teddy looks quite the little gentleman in those clothes, did you have them made in London?"

"No, Richard did, in Ripon," Mary replied distractedly.

"Really? I suppose he does make the occasional attempt to do things in the correct way," Rosamund said drily.

Mary sighed a little too loudly and her aunt looked at her sharply, at her niece's drawn expression as she narrowed her eyes to focus on the thin mist that hung around the trees at the bottom of the hill.

"Is something amiss with Richard's business? Or is he simply in the habit of using undesirable language in his role as a newspaper man?"

"He doesn't talk of business with me, Aunt Rosamund."

"Just within Teddy's earshot then. I thought Lady Hertford was going to choke on her kippers, thank goodness Mama was not there, _bastard _indeed, how unfortunate."

"There are worse words," Mary said, taking a deep breath of cold air that sent a chill into her chest.

"You surprise me!" Rosamund said, her eyebrows dangerously raised. "I hardly dare ask what other obscenities are uttered in your home, what else can we expect Teddy to say at the breakfast table?"

Mary did not respond as they made their way to the edge of the woods where amongst the trees they could just make out the beaters, swiping and marching forwards in a line, driving the birds on for the guns who had begun to take their places in front of the trees. Robert knelt down beside Teddy and was showing him how to hold the gun, the little boy listening intently and nodding seriously at intervals. Mary stood behind Richard, he was not generally a good shot and she knew she would have to moderate her responses in order to maintain a united front in the presence of the rest of the party. She watched as he loaded the gun, his hands slightly clumsy as he fumbled with the bullets, hands that the previous day had lurched from the gentlest touch to pinning her to the bed. Her pulse quickened as she looked down the line to where Matthew stood. Lavinia was not present, she thought country sports cruel; she did not know the meaning of cruelty.

As a cry went up there was the sound of wings beating overhead and two pheasants soared into the air, flying as if they would surely reach the clouds without being felled. Predictably Richard chose to ignore etiquette and aimed at the bird meant for Matthew. Mary would have rolled her eyes if she had not seen Teddy flinch violently at the sound of the first shot, freezing to the spot, the gun clasped open at the crook of his arm. The bird plummeted to the ground. Matthew fired a look in Richard's direction and in the lull that followed Mary called Teddy to her.

"Are you alright, darling?"

"Yes, Mama," he nodded, biting his bottom lip. "It was just quite loud."

"You shall have a turn soon," Robert smiled, mistaking his grandson's uncertainty. "Don't worry, stay at my side as I told you."

"Yes come along, Teddy, the next bird will be yours," Richard interjected.

"Leave the child to his male initiation, Mary, you don't want a little boy who clings to your skirts all day," Rosamund said.

* * *

><p>Matthew was a good shot, but it was only in the past year that he had felt able to handle a gun once more without finding himself cast back into the mud of the battlefield, the putrid stench of the trenches. Today he felt a release each time he fired the gun, his concentration sharp as he looked down the barrel to pinpoint his prey. He had sat in the library until late the previous night, long after everyone else had gone to bed. He had sat and turned over Teddy's photograph in his hand as he looked into the embers in the hearth. He rubbed his bruised knuckles and tried to breathe calmly and slowly, adrenaline continuing to pulse through his body. He felt that he could have continued to hit Richard, again and again; until his shirt was covered in the other mans blood, until he lay unmoving on the floor. This both disgusted and energized him, it was such a depth of hatred that it was more than a feeling, more than a sensation; it was a possession of his very soul.<p>

When he leant his head back in the armchair and closed his eyes he could see Mary and he could see Richard pushing her, striking her, whatever it was he had done all those years ago, and Matthew felt as if he could vomit. What would have happened if he had not been alerted this evening by Violet? Did Richard practice a habitual violence? Matthew struggled to see Mary tolerating that or her being able to effectively hide it from a watchful grandmother. It almost did not matter; that it had happened once, or could have happened again tonight was enough. It was more than enough; it was unbearable, that Richard would lay a hand on her in anger. The guilt churned in Matthew's stomach, he should have been there. It was more than his responsibility to protect Mary, it was the only true desire in his heart. It was the reason he had walked from the room, his fist aching from the blow he had issued. He knew she would never forgive him the loss of Teddy; he could at least protect her from that.

As Matthew took a deep breath between drives he thought of Violet's words – _what would drive him to such behavior _– of course it was obvious, he was what drove Richard to it, he was the biggest danger to Mary, by his very presence. For all Matthew knew Mary could be enduring an apparently happy married life, Richard's jealously undisturbed, all threats too distant to be thought of. Matthew looked down the line, his gaze alighting immediately on Teddy who appeared to be consuming a packet of boiled sweets that had been ceremoniously withdrawn from his grandfather's pocket. How could he be sure Richard did not see Teddy as a threat, that he would not hurt him in some way? The very thought turned Matthew's heart inside out and he gripped the gun tighter. Teddy looked up and caught Matthew watching him.

"Would you like a sweet, Cousin Matthew?" He bellowed down the line, his cheeks reddening with the effort of shouting above the conversation of the rest of the party.

Matthew walked over to where Teddy stood beside Robert and Richard.

"Thank you," he said, taking the proffered sweet with a smile.

"I once choked on a sweet," Teddy said matter of factly, his voice slightly distorted by the effort of sucking and speaking.

"Did you?" Matthew asked.

"Yes."

"Well be careful for goodness sake then, Teddy," Robert said with genuine alarm. "Bite into it!"

A loud crack ensued and the boy grinned.

"There, I bit it! I was very sick, Papa had to pat me on the back until it all came out. It was a mint humbug."

"Oh, I see," Matthew said, his eyes flickering to Richard's still face for a moment, the purple bruise on his jaw.

"Yes, on that occasion I think I rather saved the day," Richard replied, his hand moving to rest on Teddy's cap. "I do aim to be a responsible father."

Matthew turned away, before the urge to press the muzzle of the gun to the other man's neck became too great.


	15. Chapter 15

_A/N: A huge huge thank you to everyone who has reviewed or messaged me, I have been overwhelmed by your tremendous support and can only apologise that I haven't got back to everyone - I have been toiling (!) over the final chapters! A very special thank you to my beautiful beta who's talented hand has helped me no end with this chapter, thank you, my dear._

* * *

><p><em>Break in the sun till the sun breaks down<em>

February, 1924

Teddy was tired and cold and he wanted his mother. Mary and Rosamund had returned to the house to await the hunt lunch and Teddy had declined the offer to return with them. But now the initial excitement had been sucked from him until it lay like the last slither of the boiled sweet smooth on his tongue. The wagonette had lost a wheel, a fact that Teddy initially delighted in as they veered dangerously to one side and the horse gave a wild eyed snort, hooves scrambling on the path. His father had found it less amusing and it marked the beginning of a downturn in his already sensitive mood. Teddy cried out with excitement as they lurched to one side and Richard seized hold of him beneath the armpits and jumped clear of the tipping cart, swearing profusely all the while and turning on the unfortunate young man at the reins with unspent rage. So they were reduced to walking between drives and Teddy thought that Papa seemed to have lost all consideration for his shorter legs as he strode ahead through one of the denser patches of woodland.

"Do come on, Teddy!" Richard shouted back in frustration.

Teddy quickened his pace, clinging to his open shotgun.

"Give that damn gun to one of the loaders, silly boy!"

"I can manage!"

No sooner had the words come from his mouth than he tripped over a tree root, landing face down in wet leaves, the urge to cry quickly soaring into his throat.

"For God's sake!" Richard bellowed, hoicking the boy up by his arm.

"I'm sorry, Papa." Teddy's lip trembled and he lowered his chin to his chest, the damp smell of mud close on his face.

In a gentler manner than expected Richard took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped Teddy's cheeks.

"Let's move on, look I can see your grandfather," he indicated behind them to the figure at the fore of the approaching party.

"Can I walk with him?"

"Yes, very well. Be careful," he replied dimly, thinking of Matthew some way ahead, surely destined to be the first to reach the drive and bag the best position.

Richard did not turn back and continued to walk as Teddy brushed down the knees of his plus fours. Grandpapa would not be cross he thought, swallowing the little lump from his throat and setting a smile on his face. A noise akin to a low squawk caused him to look to one side at the ground a little way into a tangled patch of trees and overgrowth. Teddy's smile faltered. A bright flash of red and emerald stood out to him amongst the shriveled greying leaves and curiosity caused him to make his way towards it. It was a pheasant, lying between a fallen decayed tree and a bush, the thorns of which pricked and snagged at Teddy's clothes as he picked his way past. It was alive and Teddy's neck tingled as it rolled a glassy unseeing eye towards him, the hard clipped beak opening to emit a sound like Papa gargling in the bathroom. The ornate chest of the bird was dark and looked sticky; blood, Teddy realized with a gulp.

He knelt down and extended his hand to touch the bird's warm feathers. It quivered beneath his fingers, the eye blinking beseechingly. A low shot had been fired earlier and Teddy had seen one of the beaters put that bird out of its misery with the end of his stick. What should he do? He found he did not know so he settled back on his haunches and continued to gently stroke the bird's wing.

"There, there," he shushed the bird before beginning to sing in a quiet tuneful voice.

_Keep right on to the end of the road, keep right on to the end, tho' the way be long, let your heart be strong, keep right on round the bend!_

Tears pricked his eyes, how he wanted his mother! Teddy wiped his nose with the back of his hand and looked behind him. He stood up and panic grasped inside his chest as he saw that neither a man nor a gun dog occupied his immediate proximity. He let out a small sob and his forehead prickled uncomfortably. In the distance he could hear the crack of shots and trembling, Teddy crouched back down beside the bird. It's wings flapped pathetically as pity caused tears to stream down his cheeks.

_Tho you're tired and weary still journey on, till you come to your happy abode, where all the love you've been dreaming of will be there at the end of the road._

His voice quavered and he tilted his head to shout up into a sky obscured by skeletal creeping branches.

"Mama!"

* * *

><p>Robert was becoming increasingly tired of his son-in-law and his patience today was thinning more rapidly by the moment. He cleared the edge of the wood to see Richard chastising one of the loaders loudly and rudely. The man could be downright embarrassing; he did not know how his thoroughly charming, stubbornly willful eldest daughter bore it. This was a man who did not wish to slide unobtrusively into their family and he had certainly done his best to hammer his way to his place with excess vigor. <em>I did not wish to embarrass you<em>, he had once said, Robert scoffed inwardly at the memory, Mary's husband rather relished causing conflict; he made his money from it. He supposed he must consider that, however unsuitable, Richard provided more than adequately for his daughter, and perhaps one day his money would save the estate, Robert thought grimly. He knew that he must not bear grudges, they were stuck with the man and of course there was Teddy. Dear Teddy. The boy really was without equal and he so reminded him of Mary as a child, so very bright and beautiful, a quick wit and an observant eye. He could not be more proud of his first grandchild, whoever his father was.

"Richard! Where is Teddy?" Robert demanded, striding over to him.

Richard thrust the spent gun back into the waiting hands of his unfortunate loader.

"What?" He snapped. "I sent him to walk with you."

Robert blanched.

"Good God man, did you not think to check?" He turned, raising his voice and waving an arm to the gamekeeper some distance away. "Hold your fire!"

"What is going on?" Matthew asked, coming quickly towards where they stood. "Where is Teddy?"

"So help me God." Robert clenched his teeth, jabbing a finger near to Richard's chest. "If anything has happened to that child!"

He turned away and began to speak urgently to the gathered men.

"He can't be far," Richard barked. "Is he not with one of the beaters?"

"No, sir," the gamekeeper shook his head.

"Right! Let us walk back through the copse," Robert demanded, turning to Isis who bounded up beside him. "Go find Teddy, good girl, off you go."

With a last look of contempt at Richard, Robert led the party back into the wood, bellowing his grandson's name at the top of his voice. Richard felt quite sick and glanced at Matthew as they made off to bring up the rear of the group; every bone in the other man's face seemed to be quivering beneath the skin and his eyes contained a barely concealed zeal of hatred.

"Is this you in the guise of responsible father?" Matthew spat, thrashing past an over hanging branch.

"He can't have gone far," Richard repeated, the shouts of the other men resounding inside his head.

"You had better hope not."

"It is quite pathetic, Matthew, this need of yours to blame others."

Matthew paused in his stride for a moment, his teeth gritted.

"I thought the responsibility of protecting Teddy lay with you. You made that abundantly clear, so who else am I to blame?"

""I think if we examine the facts objectively it will be quite plain that, _you _and not I, have no concept of responsibility."

Richard was raging, anger and a dreadful guilt sloshing around inside him with each heavy step.

_Do not let him be hurt, please God._

"You left me no option." Matthew hissed, his skin crawling at his close proximity to the other man.

"There is always a choice is there not?"

"I wanted to protect her." Matthew said, a high spot of color on each of his cheekbones.

Richard laughed, a dry bark devoid of humor.

"Oh yes, from me," he paused, turning to Matthew, arms open, palms up, as if inviting a blow, "from her fiancé. I had quite clearly stated my intentions and yet that meant nothing to you, oh no, you did as you pleased. What a monster I was for not throwing her over!" He caught his breath. "Where did you do it?"

Richard pressed this unthinkable question into the pulsing air around them, forcing himself onwards as he folded inwardly at the words. "I am simply curious. Her bedroom? Yours?" He watched Matthew's face flicker, his skin so white it was almost translucent. "No? Or was it outside," he sneered. "It was wasn't it? No family or servants to accidentally stumble over you whilst you fulfilled your carnal desires."

Matthew's vision was covered in a white haze as Richard's words filtered into his mind and pervaded a memory that could bear no intrusion.

"She was mine before she was yours." Matthew found himself saying, the other man's words penetrating the unspeakable feelings he recalled from that day, the heat of her body against his.

"Then you were a fool to ever let her go." Richard replied, his heart pounding at the images he had cast into his own mind. He had felt Mary beneath him enough times to imagine what it had been like, he could feel her legs wrapped around his back and her fingernails digging into his shoulders; had it been like that? His blood ran cold at the thought; at the distance he had always felt even in those moments, as if part of her were still in the grass with that other man. Matthew was right, Mary had never been his and because of that day she never could be.

"You kept her a prisoner." Matthew replied as his hands turned to fists once more.

"No. You did that."

"You cannot control all things." Matthew said, turning on him squarely, the other men having fanned out around them to continue the search

"I controlled you. You were rather easy to dismiss and you now believe that makes me the villain?" His lips curled and he did not care if he were struck. "I am the slighted man here. Mary was my fiancée and now she is my wife, and yet I suppose you think that whatever you felt or feel for her obliterates those facts. It does not!"

Matthew's gaze faltered as Richard continued to speak, his pale eyes grown dark.

"I think your splendid family would view your behavior rather dimly, don't you? You left yourself no option. Do not blame me for all you have lost."

* * *

><p>June, 1940<p>

I listen to the sound of the shower running in the bathroom. I lay my hand on the clothes hastily sent for; the soft fabric pricks beneath my fingers. I think I can hear her crying above the rush of the water. I sit stiffly on the edge of the bed; my neck, back and shoulders ache from the night spent in that hard uncomfortable chair. You were very drowsy when we left, rolled on your side as the Matron cleaned the wounds on your back, washing your skin so the water in the bowl turned brown with dried blood. Mary wanted to stay, she was so pale and exhausted and luckily this time the Matron took the upper hand, shooing us out of the ward.

The day outside is fine and this room is stuffy, I loosen the neck of my shirt, taking a deep breath before pushing myself to my feet and crossing the room to the basin where I splash my face with cold water. _I will be strong for her now._ In the mirror I survey my features, I am nearly fifty, half a century, and I would happily have not another minute in exchange for your life, to spare you and her what I feel is stalking us. There is a hunter close by, a gun held aloft, aimed at our hearts. Sometimes in my nightmares I still hear the sounds of the Somme and I fear your experience of gunfire has visited something awful upon you; a memory that as a child you suppressed. A ghost of that February weekend is whispering in your ear and I hardly dare imagine what you are recalling as the morphine distorts your mind. You did not join the shoot again for many years after that weekend and that second time I was the one who supervised you, showed you how to aim and fire a gun. It was as if you did not recall the time before and yet I saw a flash of white in your eyes when the first shot was fired. _Am I doing it right, Cousin Matthew? _

_Where is my Papa? _Those were the first words you uttered after we found you that day, when you finally spoke, as if snapped from a dream when we approached the house from the valley. Your arms clung to your grandfather's neck as you craned your head this way and that. _Papa, where are you? _

Mary opens the door in only a towel and I am knocked from my memories; she flushes and extends her hand for the clothes, which I hastily pass to her. I move to stand at the window, my back to the room, my fingers drumming against the frame, my mind roving through the years, combing through the past with a razor.

"I should have asked Mama to send some clothes for you."

I turn around and she is dressed, precisely, carefully, as she always was. In appearance we are neither of us changed so very much, she remains the most beautiful woman in any room.

"I spent a number of years in a trench wearing the same clothes for weeks, a few days are of no consequence," I reply.

"Of course, and here was I thinking I would struggle to pin my hair myself," she gives a small, faded smile.

"You have managed more than adequately," I offer, guiding her to an armchair whilst I sit on the stool at the writing desk.

"Such petty concerns. I'm afraid I have all too often dwelt on 'the look of the thing'."

I smile at this allusion to your great grandmother.

"You are not alone in that regard, I regret much of what I have done for the sake of appearances, for fear of what people would think." I say. "Unfortunately most revelations are only delayed, and with that the disappointment made greater."

"You think Mama is disappointed? I think she is rather beyond that," she raises her eyebrows and fingers the worn fabric on the arm of the chair.

"I wasn't talking about your mother," I pause and I wonder if I should continue but realize that I must. "Your father knew."

"What?" A tremble in her voice, the color drains from her cheeks. "When?"

"After – after that weekend. I think perhaps disappointed is not quite the word." I find I cannot meet her gaze now and I look down at my hands.

"He never said," she whispers and tears shine in her eyes.

"No, I knew he would not," I reply. "He loved you."

"Even then?" She demands, her voice a little higher now.

"It was not your fault."

"Oh, Matthew," she recovers herself and smiles a little; her lips pressed together, a raise of an eyebrow, a shadow of amusement. "I rather think it required the active involvement of both parties."

I shy away from her gaze and feel my cheeks blush; even now the memory causes my heart to burn.

"I made an awful mess of everything really," I say, a meaningless understatement and yet she takes my hand where it rests on my knee.

"Yet you are here with me, at last."

Her eyes are locked to mine and I feel I can never look away.

"At last," I repeat, "and this time, forever."

* * *

><p>February, 1924<p>

The bird was not yet dead and its movements had become more frantic as if it were being moved by an unseen hand. His fingers trembling, Teddy slid the bullet into the gun, he shouldn't have it; Richard had been carrying their ammunition, not noticing when Teddy bent to pick up the unspent bullet that slipped from his pocket. _He will be cross - Never point your gun unless I have told you -_ Teddy's face was dirty save for a streak running down each cheek, a whitened residue where tears had fallen. At his feet the pheasant suffered, it needed to sleep, would his shot end its pain? _I am in the Great War! I must do what must be done! _This fictional slant on the situation eased the shake in his hand ever so slightly and he closed one eye to look down the barrel, his finger curling over the trigger. _Murderer! _Teddy swallowed a burn of vomit from his throat, sending it's sickening stream back to his stomach. The beady eye rolled, it looked like one of those things spread on toast at Mama's dinner parties. The entire breast of the bird was matted with congealing blood; it ran away into the dirt, thick and unholy. He heard his mother's choked scream, pressed his hands over his ears beneath the bed once more.

"Teddy!"

His heart leapt violently and he spun around so suddenly he lost his footing on the damp leaves. The gun fell, it convulsed from his grasp and the immediate crack that reverberated through the trees caused Teddy to slam his eyes shut. He remained in this manner for a time until finally he turned back and opened his eyes, the after shock of the gunshot settling behind him. He looked down and the pheasant glared at him, its beak open, locked and threatening as if poised to bite. He opened his mouth to scream but there was no sound; like a dry retch, a silent howl. Teddy began to shake, the thick clotted feathers rearing before his eyes, his teeth chattering inside his mouth. He stepped into a run and a sickening swell met his boot as he trod on the ailing pheasant, its body sinking under his weight. It died then; a final unearthly noise. _Murderer! _He ran and ran through the trees, deeper into the wood, pushing through overgrowth, wild and directionless until he fell; sprawling, gasping as his knees connected with the metal of a gamekeeper's trap. The scream came then, it returned, soaring and rushing past Teddy's throat, a wail that at first he thought came from the pheasant he had left behind him. He clutched his torn knees and screamed as if wrenched forcibly into flames

It was Isis who found him, her soft affectionate nose nuzzling around Teddy's face as he lay curled in a ball on the ground. The dog barked before settling herself down beside him, nudging her head beneath his limp arm and licking his face with her rough tongue.

"Teddy! Oh God, is he hurt?" Robert sunk to the boy's side and turned his face gently with his hand, Teddy blinked up at him. "Oh thank God! Your poor knees, darling boy," he said lifting him up against his chest so his grandson's head bobbed against his shoulder, his face expressionless.

"We've found him!" Matthew called to the other men, relief filling his chest.

"M'Lord!"

One of the beaters tripped towards Robert, his thin face dripping with a ghostly pallor.

"What is it, man?" Robert asked alarmed, holding Teddy against one hip, the child's head bowed, his neck at an awkward angle as his eyes swam listlessly.

"T-t-the shot we heard, M'Lord…"

"Yes, yes?" He replied impatiently.

"He's hurt bad."

"Who is?"

"Sir Richard, m'Lord."

* * *

><p>June, 1940<p>

"I am Captain Carlisle's grandmother and I would be grateful if you could show me to his bed."

Grandmamma is standing beside the nurse's desk and I turn my head slowly to the sound of her voice. She looks towards me then and she cannot conceal the horror on her face. Where your expressions have always been tempered and unreadable to many, Grandmamma wears her emotions written across her attractive features in indelible ink. _Look at this toad, Grandmamma! _She is looking at me more favorably than she did the day I dropped a reptile at her feet but with a great deal more sorrow etched into every line of her skin, and just as much horror. She sinks to the chair beside my bed, her ladies maid standing back at a respectful distance. I am not able to move easily and my head swims as I incline it towards her, my eyes move over her hazily. Perhaps I will go blind after all_. _I have so little breath.

"Darling boy."

She reaches to take my hand gingerly. I close my eyes and I am very confused. I feel a cloth at my brow and I hear the deep whirring, feel the strange vibrating sensation inside my nose and deep into my chest. A burning point of pain starts at my sternum and spreads across my body, I scream but there is no sound, I do not think my face can move. _I am in the Great War! _It is here, and I remember the missing piece, I feel as if I am sinking once more as I watch him fall to his knees first and then back into the mud. There is blood and it is all over his neck and the left side of his face. So much blood and it empties into my hands, the hands that dropped the gun.

"Teddy, darling? Are you in pain?"

She pulls me, the desperation in her voice dragging me back from a maelstrom.

"I dropped my gun. I killed Papa." The words float into the air and I do not know if my voice has uttered them as they hang disembodied around me.

_Papa! Papa! Papa!_

I walked as if dragged, a silent scream disfiguring my face. I fell to my knees beside Papa's body, reached out my small hand and touched my father's face, my fingers trailed briefly against the hole in his neck; the bright pink flesh, the collapsed side of his jaw. Papa's eyes were open, unseeing, a snapshot in time. The handkerchief he had used earlier poked from the top of his breast pocket, a white wing. I removed it and dabbed away at the torrent of blood that continued to stream unbridled from the wound and from his parted lips, it soaked the handkerchief, reduced it to a ghastly sodden rag. My mouth slammed shut with such force that my teeth felt as if they had split, shattered inside a numb head.

_Wake up, Papa!_

The words did not come, they were a moan, a deep humming moan. I grasped his shoulder and shook with as much strength as I could muster in an arm that felt it were not connected to my body.

_Wake up!_

The act of him rolling loosely onto his back made me to scramble to my feet and his fixed gaze at the leaden sky above spoke with a clarity even I, not yet six years old, could understand.

Grandmamma recoils but it is only for a moment, her mouth trembles before setting into a defiant line of reassurance.

"It was an accident." She says, firmly now, both her hands tightly encasing mine.

She knows and I think I am relieved.

"Teddy, listen to me." Her voice is suddenly almost like yours. "It was an accident, a terrible accident. I swore to your grandfather that if you ever remembered what happened, I'd make sure you knew that."

_Grandpapa. _I see him, his smile and his large warm hands, Isis around his ankles, the comforting smell of his neck when I buried my face there.

"He loved you, Teddy, and he protected you, he wished for you never to remember and he only told me so that if you did, you would have someone to share the burden."

Her eyes are a very bright impossible blue and they brim with tears. She kisses my hand and I am at peace for a moment. _An accident. _My life has the impression of an accident and yet it is not. I am the center around which it has spun and now at the end, as at the beginning, you and he are united for me once more. I close my eyes and I feel the day drawing to a close; the shadows gathering, the smell of mud on my face, the blood soaked knees. I feel a nerve flicker near my eye. I am ready and it is done, there is no more, all is as it should be._ Keep right on to the end, tho' the way be long, let your heart be strong, keep right on round the bend. _


	16. Chapter 16

_A/N: This chapter has been through several drafts and I want to give a huge thanks to my wonderful beta jadeandlilac whose patience and tireless enthusiasm has sustained me through all the redrafting, all the additions and rejigging. She warns that you may need a tissue and some chocolate for this chapter! Thank you so much for all your reviews, comments and general encouragement – I can't tell you how happy I am that people have enjoyed this story, so without further ado, here is the penultimate part._

* * *

><p><em>I stand amid the roar, Of a surf tormented shore<em>

February, 1924

Matthew hovered in the doorway of the nursery, his hands restless at his sides.

"Can I help you, sir?" Nanny appeared, bobbing her head.

"Lady Grantham asks if you would come and collect Master Teddy."

"Oh, yes, of course, sir," she nodded, flustered. "I shall come at once."

The atmosphere in that week had been nothing short of horrendous and he walked back down the corridor, glancing over the balustrade at the people milling below in the great hall, the swath of black, the stench of mourning. They were conducting a wake and mourning for a man none of them had liked, shocked into protocol by the manner of his violent death. It was not a prerequisite to be widely adored before you died and Richard deserved to be remembered no less than the next man. Matthew would certainly remember him, the threat and power in a presence that had been so suddenly vanquished. He descended the stairs and met Robert at the bottom.

"Would you care for a drink?"

Matthew nodded and they retreated to the empty library, closing the door firmly.

"A frightful day," Robert said, his back to him as he poured two glasses of whiskey.

"Yes," Matthew agreed, taking the glass. "No word from Detective Spencer?"

"The inquest will be held next week but the result is fairly certain."

"Oh?" Matthew swallowed a gulp of the amber liquid quickly so that it burned its way down his gullet.

"Misadventure, Teddy's gun must have been faulty, Richard was carrying it." Robert replied, his eyes roving the bookshelves, avoiding Matthew's gaze as he nursed his drink in his hand.

"Oh, that seems…" Matthew started, stopping as his cousin turned to him, his face steady.

"It is just as it seems, and the coroner will no doubt concur." His tone invited no further comment or speculation and yet he continued to watch Matthew's face in a manner that was oddly dispassionate.

"I see."

"You look as if you have something you wish to say, Matthew."

Matthew felt a chill conflict with the heat the whiskey had left in his stomach.

"I am just relieved Mary will not have to endure any further distress," he blinked and his discomfort grew as something hardened behind the older man's eyes.

"Are you?"

"Of course," Matthew replied, frowning.

Robert turned away once more and Matthew found this even more disconcerting than the unreadable expression that had been written across his face a moment before.

"I think you could have saved my daughter a great deal of distress, don't you?"

Robert's voice had begun to climb, deepening and escalating as he spun around and looked at Matthew in what he now recognized as rage.

"I can…" he began, blood rushing inside his ears.

"Explain?" Robert supplied and his voice exploded inside Matthew's head. "You can explain? Well, that I must hear, please, do _explain._"

Matthew's cheeks flamed and the hard bitter scent of the whiskey soured in his mouth.

"Shall I spare your blushes?" Robert demanded. "Shall I provide a summary of what I have gleaned? Very well. Twelve years ago we welcomed you into our lives and following initial misgivings we all took you to our hearts. A confusing and unfortunate debacle involving a thwarted engagement to Mary ensued but we recovered, we moved on. You would be a son if not a son-in-law." Robert paused, momentarily, like a coiled spring, before continuing. "Mary became engaged to Richard, a man I disliked, and you found, Lavinia…"

"Cousin Robert…" Matthew tried but found himself unable to form another coherent word.

"Don't 'Cousin Robert' me! To all intents and purposes it seemed, to me at least, that things were at last settled, if not in the way I would have liked, but you had other ideas didn't you? Didn't you?"

"Not ideas…" He replied, desperately.

"Not ideas? Barely even _thoughts_ it seems! You had _desires_, desires on which you felt compelled to act, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"Yes! Not content with your engagement to another woman, or Mary's to Richard, you decided to act in the spirit of a condemned man, carpe diem!"

Robert stepped closer and Matthew could not meet his eyes.

"You seized the day," Robert spat. "Then you left." With this statement he gave a small hard laugh, which quickly turned to steel. "You left Mary pregnant," he paused, each word emitted from between clenched teeth, "and then you married another woman."

"I didn't know," Matthew said and the words were weak and spineless on his lips, slipping into nothing around them.

"Oh come now, Matthew! One assumes you were not oblivious to the facts of life, no; you quite simply thought you had gotten away with it, and you were quite willing to pretend it had never happened."

"No," he protested. "I thought, well I didn't think, of course, that was the problem," he babbled, "by the time I knew about… about Teddy, it was too late."

"You had already married Lavinia, my God, you don't do things by halves do you?" Robert scoffed, incredulous and so hurt that he barely wished to have this conversation a moment longer.

"I acted impulsively. I did not think I would survive the war, I wanted Mary to go on, to live her life, I wanted to release her." The words fell from his mouth and they were inconsequential; whispers amid screams.

"Would 'goodbye' not have sufficed?" Robert retorted bitterly.

"I have failed, I have let you down."

"I find I hardly know you," he replied, and the anger faded and he was only tired, "and the person you have most let down is the one who least deserves it."

* * *

><p>Robert sank into an armchair as soon as Matthew had left the room, he glared at the second glass of whiskey in his hand and he felt quite ill. Sick from the confrontation with someone he cared so very deeply for, someone transformed before his eyes. He did not know what was hardest to bear but thought that perhaps it was the fact that he saw Matthew very much in his own image and he had always considered himself a loyal man, a dutiful man; he had recognized this in his heir. The truth showed him to be a fool, a blind fool. It was an unthinkable betrayal and Robert felt anger constrict his chest once more as he clenched his fingers around the glass.<p>

If he cast his mind back he had done things as a young man that were around the boundaries of propriety, all men are permitted indiscretions, but this, this was intolerable. The very thought that Matthew, of all people, could be so reckless, so wanton, so irresponsible. So damned stupid – and with his daughter! Robert surged to his feet, placing the glass down carelessly so it teetered for a moment. He paced the room, his hands locked behind his back; the tumults of his thoughts casting him back and forth across the carpet in hard forced steps.

There had been signs, in hindsight, of course there had, long before Teddy was even born. Robert passed his hand over his mouth, his lips dry, his mind travelling to the night Matthew had stunned them with his marriage to Lavinia to his own announcement that Matthew was missing and to Mary's face when he told her of his return. She had looked like a person granted a reprieve just as the hangman's noose was slipped about a quivering neck, as if all the life, all the very essence of existence, returned to her in a moment that chilled the heart. _There's none so blind as those who will not see._

He had spent the night in his dressing room, unable to sleep since uncovering the letter amongst Richard's effects at Haxby, and as his eyes had narrowed over the words, everything he thought he had known imploded. _Forever, Matthew. _Forever! That was rather a cruel joke; there would be no forever, certainly not for the home and estate he had dedicated his life to. It could all have been golden, a secure and glimmering future to comfort him when his time came to shuffle from this mortal coil. Now it would never be so and the fault for that could only lie with Matthew. This house, every beautiful heirloom and acre of this glorious estate should one day be Teddy's. He was every wish and every prayer and yet it was impossible. Teddy would never be Earl of Grantham; this very thought penetrated the dark depths of Robert's heart.

The future for his beloved grandson would not lie here where he belonged. The reading of Richard's will two days previously had made Teddy's prospects abundantly clear. Robert had been stunned by his late son-in-law's extraordinary wealth, even greater than anything he had imagined. Teddy's trust fund ran into millions of pounds and when he came of age he would hold the majority chunk of voting shares for the newspaper cooperation. He thought of Teddy, in fifteen years time, of Theodore Carlisle behind that elegant teak desk in Fleet Street, purveyor of tabloid scandal, and he shuddered. How different life could have been.

He had barely been able to contemplate quite how Richard came to be in possession of the letter, or even what that man's true role in the whole debacle had been. Should he be feeling sympathy for the man? Robert suspected not. He considered that Richard was capable of using absolutely anything to his ultimate advantage, he had made Mary his wife after all, but then what choice had she had? _Mary._ It pained him to think of her, suffering alone, unable to confide in the people who were supposed to love and protect her. He was smoothing his brow with his hand when a light tap sounded at the door and he bade the visitor to enter. It was Teddy. The child slipped gingerly into the room, all his natural exuberance tempered, stiff in his smartly tailored suit.

"Do you not wish to change?" He asked gently, recovering himself.

"No," Teddy said quietly.

"Come here," Robert beckoned him to the sofa, picking the boy up and seating him on his knee. "It has been a very sad day."

Teddy nodded, turning his cheek into his grandfather's chest.

"Will I die, Grandpapa?"

Robert shifted awkwardly, his arm holding Teddy closer. "We must all die, my dear."

"Even you?"

"Even me. We cannot know the ways of these things so we must enjoy the time spent living, do you agree?"

Teddy mused upon this for a moment, before turning his face up to his grandfather's, his eyes wide.

"But it is not forever, is it? I will see my Papa again?"

Unbidden tears stung at the corners of Robert's eyes.

"One day that may be so."

"Tomorrow?" Teddy pressed.

"Not tomorrow."

"But soon?"

"I hope not very soon. When you are an old man…"

"An old man! But Papa cannot wait so long for all his things!" Teddy interrupted, his forehead creasing with anxiety.

"His things?" Robert asked, swallowing the lump rising in his throat.

"His briefcase, his gloves, his toothbrush, the pomade he puts in his hair, the paperweight I made him; it was a rock, I painted it. All of his things are still here!" The little boy's fingers worked anxiously in his lap as he waited for a reply, his gaze never leaving his grandfathers. "Why are you crying, Grandpapa?"

Robert hastily raised his hand to his eyes and wiped them, a forced smile on his lips.

"I'm sorry," he managed.

He drew his grandson to him and held the child tightly, resting his cheek against Teddy's head and holding the small hand firmly in his. He realized then that the revelations of the past twenty-four hours had changed nothing, that he loved Teddy with all of his being. The face of the detective as he told Robert that a small bore gun had discharged the fatal shot came unbidden to his mind, the greedy turn of the man's mouth when he had accepted the money pressed into his hand to make it go away. His grandson would not be spoilt, he would not be tainted by this unbearable tragedy, and there was nothing Robert wouldn't do to prevent the damnation of the rest of Teddy's life. The child could not remember, that much was obvious and Robert found himself gut wrenchingly relieved by this fact; _he may never remember_. He would protect Teddy and hold his hand if the truth revealed itself, but today the boy had lost his father and Robert had lost Matthew, a son he felt he may never be able to forgive. For now they remained, embracing and silent in their individual grief.

* * *

><p>Mary shut the door of the bedroom, turning around and leaning her back against it. Her hands fell from her mouth to her sides and she stood very still, tilting her head back and then quickly forward when she felt so dizzy she feared she would faint. Her forehead felt numb. <em>Dust to dust. <em>The lace handkerchief she had clasped in her hand during the church service was dry, almost mocking in its perfection; not a stain, not a blemish. She had been cold and eerily calm, not as she had been during Patrick's memorial service all those years before, for then she had simply not cared enough.

Today she had felt released, and from the bonds of marriage she certainly had been. But Richard was gone, and she had not wanted him gone. _Deliver me from all mine offences. _He bound her in the conflict of feelings she still held for him; she had wanted to escape, to leave him behind, to be with Matthew in all of that impossible dream but she had not wanted him extinguished. He had been all things for so long: lover, captor and protector. He had been malicious, cruel and callous but he was the only person who knew her; who knew the dark depths she had plundered and remained at her side, his face cast in shadow, a hand at her back, that knowing twist on his lips.

They were holding a wake of sorts downstairs, people she knew from London and Richard's investors; anxious about their shares, tittering nervously amongst themselves and avoiding her. Her mother was, as ever, the respectfully smiling hostess, accepting condolences on her behalf, gently patting Teddy's shoulders as she sent him away with Nanny. Mary could not participate, not in that, in the empty sympathies and downturned mouths. So much had been a lie and yet this was not; the grief that she felt was real and in its intensity, unfathomable. It was not like Matthew, not akin to the cascading agony that had clotted every rush of blood to her heart when she thought he was gone, forever gone. It was not like that but it was painful and she allowed herself to cry, to weep for a man who had pulled and pushed her; loved and punished her in equal measure.

She found the tears began to fall now and her face contorted painfully under their weight. This was just like Richard, to play the final hand, to better any other move that could ever be made, to cripple her underneath his corpse. Her family did not know her, and many of the things they did know disappointed them, she had only to remember Mama's face the night they had carried Kemal's body back to his room. Richard had known everything and when she was with him, trapped in his arms, she was safe in that knowledge. The person they saw was but a pale shadow. She would sit around the dining table, the breakfast table, take tea with her mother and grandmother; she would smile, allow them to protect and console her, let them think that their efforts were not in vain. She would let it continue and she would be more alone than ever, a part of her rotting in the ground beside Richard.

Mary lay down on top of the sheets, her hands close to her face. Each time Matthew tried to speak to her or cast a glance in her direction, she shut her ears, looked away; she could not engage him. Each time she thought of him she recalled the look on his face before he had left the room after his fight with Richard, of his voice raised in anger, the alien words uttered from his lips. She thought of the unspeakable act she feared he might have committed. There was a knock at the door and very slowly Mary sat up, pulling herself to her feet with the aid of the nightstand. When she opened it Matthew was standing there.

"Can I come in?" He asked, softly.

"Would that be proper?" And she was cold once more, every muscle in her face yearning for collapse.

He did not reply and she allowed him to step into the room and shut the door behind him.

"Well?" She demanded, taking the handkerchief and dabbing her eyes, a desperate lilt to her voice. "Now what?" And she almost laughed.

"Oh, Mary," he stepped towards her, his hand extended.

"Don't, just don't!" She waved his hand away. "The detectives will be back you know, asking more awful questions, probing and searching into all our lives. 'Do you think anyone in the party would wish your husband harm?' and what can I say? What do I say to that?" She sank down on the edge of the bed, her head swimming, the room diminishing around her. "Well yes, in fact Matthew threatened to kill him!"

Matthew stood very still, his fingers twitching at his sides, powerless as he watched her despair.

"Do you want me to go?" He asked.

"Oh, Matthew!" she dug her fingers into her thighs through her black gown. "I have never wanted you to go! When has that made any difference? You must go, leave me to survive and conceal another scandal, I will brave it."

* * *

><p>Matthew stood looking out across the estate. He was not cold but the air was wet and a fine rain flecked his skin, casting a film of moisture over his clothes. He felt released at once from the oppressive funereal atmosphere but all too quickly a clarity settled over him, the knowledge that the mirror was beginning to splinter. Robert could see himself in his heir no more; Matthew had understood it as the other man's eyes had searched his face, challenged him, seeking some trace of a man who was perhaps a mere memory. He would not fail Teddy this time and he felt a piercing pain beneath his ribs as his hands clenched into fists by his sides. He thought of that pale face, the child's little mouth hanging open as he took him from Robert at the bottom of the stairs the day of the shoot.<p>

Matthew held him tightly and he realized that it was only the second time that he had carried his son in his arms. He could not bear to see Mary, to see anyone; let Robert tell them, let him call the police and give him this small moment with his child. Teddy did not speak and Matthew laid him down on the bed. There were spotted patches of blood staining the knees of his plus fours dark and Matthew considered summoning Nanny to bathe the wounds. He knelt down beside the bed and smoothed Teddy's cheek with his hand but the boy continued to stare blankly ahead and it was then that Matthew felt afraid of what had happened, of what the child had seen. An accident, a terrible accident, Matthew could barely think, what other explanation could there be? He and Richard had parted after their confrontation, for how long before they had found Teddy, Matthew was not sure. The police would ask, and an undeniable sense of self preservation seeped into his consciousness. He must say as little as possible.

Matthew moved to roll up the knee of Teddy's trouser to see if the bleeding had stopped and his hands shook slightly. He swallowed a lump in his throat as he looked at the delicate protuberance that was Teddy's poor ripped knee. There was a deep gash but it had turned thick and dark and only a thin stream of bright red blood persisted when the joint was bent.

"Does it hurt?"

Teddy did not reply and as Matthew glanced up at him he saw a piece of dark, stiff material protruding from Teddy's pocket. He removed it and saw that it was a handkerchief, a piece of cloth entirely saturated with blood. It smelt of iron and something pungent; it smelt of meat. He opened it out in his hands and saw the embroidered monogram in the corner; they were Richard's initials.

"Did you use this for your knees?" Matthew asked and his voice felt strangely distant to his ears.

Teddy did not move his head; he did not show he had heard. There was too much blood. Matthew put it into his pocket and washed his hands at the basin in the corner of the room.

He could not let the thought open now, fold out flat against his mind, blocking out the light. Matthew tilted his head back slightly so the increasing weight of the rain spat against his cheeks. Richard had not been carrying Teddy's gun. Did Robert know? Or did he suspect _him_? He should go back inside, rejoin his mother and Lavinia and yet he felt he could not. Let this rain wash away all sin, let it wash away the doubt and the creeping fear that sought to squeeze and smother his heart.

* * *

><p>June, 1940<p>

I wake and for one glorious moment the world is empty before it all returns, a great cloak of fog sweeping across me and covering my eyes. Beneath my head I feel the warm rise and fall of Matthew's chest and I allow my face to continue to rest there for a moment, the sweet sound of his heart buzzing in my ear. Then it is over and I cannot contain my dread as I sit up quickly and look to the window, the heat of the day is beginning to fall away, we have been here too long. The threads running tightly through me contract and I need to be with you, my precious child. I look back at where your father sleeps fully clothed beside me, one hand lying across his chest, his legs hanging over the edge of the bed as if he has fallen asleep where we fell. I wish I had spent many more moments watching him sleep, his eyes closed, that handsome face relaxed and yet not, for the tension remains as if slumber could not quite claim him completely. I think of another time I saw him sleep in this manner, the night your grandfather died, and the revelations today make his actions then more poignant.

I was woken by Sybil, her face white and crumpled - _it's time - _and as I made my way down the corridor I could make out Edith and Mama waiting for us outside the door. The gloom hung heavily around my parents' bed and in it my father had been reduced to someone who barely clung to the shadow of the man he was. A stroke paralyzing his right side, slurring his speech and casting a dulling brush across his eyes. Matthew slept in the chair beside him, one hand holding his; now this means so much more, and I can only believe that in those last days your grandfather forgave him, forgave us. I did not wish to wake him then and I do not wish to wake him now, envying and protecting any extra moments of dreamless sleep that might steel him for what is to come.

I lean over and gently kiss his cheek, my lips fluttering over his warm skin. He stirs and I consider withdrawing in the hope that he will drift back to sleep but I do not. I dip down and this time I kiss his lips slowly in farewell and when I move to go his hand reaches up and takes mine.

"I'm going back to the hospital," I say softly. "You could stay here and rest."

"I do not want to rest a moment without you here," he replies, pushing himself to a sitting position, his hair awry and his hand still in mine.

"I am afraid," I admit, and my lips tighten and tremble.

He reaches so he is holding both my hands.

"So am I."

"I feel as if Teddy has something he needs to say," I pause, my heart pounding. "That he has been trying to tell us."

"Yes," he nods. "And I am afraid that I know what it is."

His eyes are glassy, as if their very surface may break open. I see something at the edge, a film rolling back from his eyes, and I think it is relief. His fingers relax minutely in mine. In him I see you, the little tilt of your chin as you looked up into my face when I brushed your lapels, that insistent little voice as you marched off to join Richard and my father. _I will be with Papa, and you won't be far away will you? _I think of you now, strong and grown, my broken boy, torn by war, that day revisited upon you in your nightmares, the barely coherent snatches of speech that beg me to understand.

"Oh?" My voice is weak and the words fall quickly from my lips. "Matthew, I – I thought it was you, all these years, this terrible feeling, this guilt. But I look at you now and I don't know how I could ever have thought that you might be capable of such a thing."

I bow my head, biting my lip, my hands so still in his.

"Mary, I wanted to kill Richard."

He leans forward, he cannot meet my eyes and his head is bent so we rest our foreheads together; his is very hot.

"But you didn't," I say and a pressing relief drums in the base of my skull.

We do not say anything more. The hospital is a short walk from the hotel and with each step I feel I am moving towards an unmentionable fate. Matthew's hand is moist, his fingers entwined with mine as above us the sky begins to darken. A summer's day growing humid and full, bearing down above us in clouds that gather threateningly. We are inside the hospital's cavernous corridors when I gain the sense that outside the heat has broken, cold and sharp, a ringing confirmation resounding from a sky light above our heads. The ward itself is an isolated void of it's own, untouched by the elements, the windows giving a glimpse of a world nobody inside can contemplate. As we walk towards your bed Dr Morris and the Matron intercept us and I fix them with eyes that do not see. We are led away and I look back at where you lie and want nothing more than to go to you, lay my hand against your chest as it rises and falls slowly. In my arms I feel the weight of that soft haired baby you once were, little hands raised to touch my face.

The door of the office shuts behind us with quiet finality and the Matron sits herself to my other side as the doctor faces us across the desk, his hands spreading and then clasping together before him. I see the turn of his mouth, the softening of his cheeks and I cannot look at your father as his hand clutches mine tightly.

"It is not good news I'm afraid."

I am aware of making a small noise, a gasp, a cry; I am not sure. I am not quite here. Matthew moves his chair towards mine and his arm closes around my shoulders and I tense there, waiting for the next blow, suspended within the moment, the breath in my lungs stagnating.

"Theodore…" he begins.

"Teddy," I correct him automatically, in a voice that was once my own.

"Teddy, as we have discussed, sustained serious injuries, and as a result we are finding ourselves unable to control the amount of fluid in his lungs. It now seems that it has affected his heart and other organs. I must tell you that there is nothing more we can do."

It is Matthew that shatters.

"No!" He shouts and it is like a gunshot in my ear. "No!"

He wrenches his arm away from me and his head falls forwards, his fingers clench in his hair, digging into his scalp. The Matron reaches to pat my arm and yet I do not feel her touch. I do not break but I bend under the weight of the words and it is all darkness. It is as if every day and in every moment this was waiting for me, twisted in the shadows, one hand always around your wrist, poised to take you away. _Oh, don't take him, please don't take him. _I realize that I always looked at you as if absorbing every beautiful detail, as if preparing to never forget the shy smile at your lips, the light in your eyes; a young man who was always that soaring, spirited boy in my heart. You look at me and you are the whole world; all that illuminates the sky, and I am complete.

You are in your night shirt, a bed heavy with toys and books, flushed and wide eyed with your head buried against my chest - _I cannot stay down for long, Mama! –_ I close my eyes and you are standing in the hallway of our home in London, your arms outstretched, your trunk and straw boater flung to the ground beside you - _I am home! - _You are wearing your army uniform and standing on the station platform at Downton and you are smiling at me and then you are riding, running, hugging and kissing my cheek – _I have not winced nor cried aloud _- You are dancing at the servants ball, you are skipping down the driveway with your knees dirty and your hand in Louisa's. You are storming and stamping in tantrum, you are covering your hair in pomade, you are being everything; every beautiful, incredible, wonderful thing you ever did, you are doing for me now. Sweet, sweet boy.

Matthew turns to me and grief drapes him as he searches my face with a desperation I cannot respond to. Unspeakable anguish tugs and distorts his features and they swim before my eyes. Somewhere, in the distance, I hear the doctor offer to leave us alone and I shake my head, getting up and letting him hastily open the door for me. Around your bed there are screens and you are cut off, separated, as if this moment will not permeate every inch of the ward. We are set apart and the screens are pulled back behind us as we stand beside your bed, they close us in; trap us in a superficially private hell. We must face it, _I _must face it, and I find my mind curiously empty as if this is the last scratch in time that will ever exist. You are not that small boy and when I look at you now you do not smile and your eyes are closed. The image shatters inside my head, sending its piercing particles through me and it was all a dream. You were a dream, a perfect piece that did not fit with all I had done before. I sit on the edge of the bed and I lean down, my arms around you, my fingers tucked under your shoulders as I rest my face by your cool cheek. I can feel the faint whistling of your breath on my skin, the long pauses and the little rapid gasps that follow.

I feel then that you are stepping away, a last wave from the train – _do not fear for me. _You are slipping through my fingers and I sit down on the edge of the bed, my fingertips tracing your cheekbone, and I know you will not open your eyes when I say your name. _Teddy. _They have taken away the tube and everything about your face is a perfect shadow, there is a red mark where the tape has been and around your nose there is dried blood but I do not register these things because you are as perfect to me as the day you were born. Just you and I in the world; only your touch able to reach my heart.

We sit and time moves irrecoverably on, the world revolves around us and yet we are here, suspended in something that has no beginning and no end. I can hear your father, I can hear him crying and yet I cannot turn around to him, not now. You were all that remained, he was gone and you were the only part of him to hold and for the briefest time I had you both. I let him go and now I must let you go. The terrible doubt I felt, that poisonous notion has bled away into the ground; you have given me his innocence but you are not guilty my darling, you are guilty of nothing.

When it comes I know immediately. I see it; I see the last light flee your face, the last breath deflate your chest. I see your very essence dissolve and you are gone and what remains is your beautiful shell. I realize that I will never see you in the hall again, smiling, your arms held out to me – _I am home, Mama! - _and it is now that I shatter.


	17. Chapter 17

_A/N: Argh my emotions are running wild, this is it, the final chapter! This has been such a wonderful learning experience for me and I am just so very happy that so many of you have enjoyed it too. Thank you to every last one of you. I want to dedicate this final chapter to my betas, Ariadne and jadeandlilac who are both supremely talented in their own right and have given me all the benefits of their expertise, experience and opinions. I love you girls, thank you from the bottom of my heart! Without further ado._

* * *

><p><em>Remember me when I am gone away, gone far away into the silent land. <em>

June, 1940

I think that this moment will never pass. She leans over in the chair with her face next to yours on the pillow, her hand resting on your still chest. Her back is shaking and she is sobbing and I sit there, numb and unmoving, I do not know what to do. I feel as if I cannot take another breath, as if you took all the air from my lungs with you. You do not seem real, waxen and perfect as if life has never filled your face, as if pain has never crossed your brow, as if tears have never fallen down your cheeks. As if you have never smiled, never laughed, as if you were never ours. My eyes are full and I feel every muscle and joint in my body rigidly tense and it is a physical pain, a splitting, screaming agony. It will never pass. It has grown dark around us and I feel myself leaning over a precipice. My mind closes in and grief seeps into every turgid vein, every fraction of my being. I gasp, a shallow breath, before trying to inhale more deeply into a body that seems to be drowning.

"Mary," I whisper and I reach out, my hand resting on her trembling shoulder blade. "Mary," I repeat and my voice breaks.

She does not move so I lean down beside her, my arm around her back, my lips against her cheek so I am inhaling each sob from her mouth. Your pajama shirt is wet and I let my fingers close around the material, as if I could pull you back. I watch you in my memories and they are as distant as you seem to be now, flesh and bones remain and all that is beautiful is gone.

You are on the bench, your head inclined backwards to look up into the branches of the tree above you, your fingers fiddling with the hem of your short trousers. It has been raining, the grass shines with moisture and I have caught you in a moment of quiet contemplation. I do not go to you. I watch, a little way back on the path; you would see me if you looked but you don't. _Truly the most beautiful child._ It seemed unreal to me then that you were mine, that you existed because of one pure moment of passion with a woman I have always loved. You represented our love, all of its truth and none of its pain. If during the innocent times I sat with her on that bench I had already known, if I had known that we would have you and then lose you, would I have changed that moment of unbridled desire? No. I know I would not. It is the one thing that although I have tried, I cannot regret.

I do not know how we will let you go, how we can possibly go on.

Time must pass and the rhythm of the ward continues, the distant sounds I barely register as the Matron and a young nurse appear from around the screens. Night falls and they want to prepare you. The girl's lips twitch and her hands run up and down the sides of her apron as the older woman takes charge gently, calmly, through years of practice negotiating with the bereaved.

"Darling…" I start, my fingers trembling around her shoulders.

"No." She chokes and presses her face beneath your jaw. "No I can't."

"Oh, you must," and my voice splinters. "We _must_."

I ease her away and I see your face as she moves back and falls into my chest. _Peace everlasting for the quiet dead. _Mary cries against me, her hands grasping desperately at my shirt.

"You can come back tomorrow and see him in the chapel of rest," the Matron says, laying a light hand on my shoulder.

I nod and Mary turns back to you, bending down and kissing your cheek, her lips breaking into a cry that is nearly a scream and my own heart strains and rips inside my chest. She grips my hand as she withdraws and I too kiss your cheek, it is cold and I glimpse the purple stain spreading down the back of your neck and across your shoulders. Somehow we leave and I support her as her legs buckle at every step. The hotel room we left mere hours ago bellows its normality at us, mocking, as she falls onto the bed. I stand near the door uselessly, and when I glance to the writing desk I see the pair of pajamas that your grandmother sent for you neatly folded. I grab them hastily and the act of doing so seems to urge me violently from my stupor. It is as if everything has fallen and I am buried, unable to breath and crushed beneath the weight of mortar.

I lock the bathroom door behind me and turn on the shower. The water rushes and strains jerkily and I rip off my clothes as if they are burning me. I stand underneath the scalding heat of the water and it burns my skin and that feels right. I clench my teeth and sink to the floor, digging my fingernails into my knees until I draw blood. The blistering torrent beats relentlessly down on my back and neck like nails and I reach outside the shower, taking your pajama jacket and stuffing it close to my mouth as I scream.

* * *

><p>May, 1924<p>

Teddy ran his fingers over the extravagantly wrapped presents arranged on the table in front of him, excited anticipation fizzing in his stomach. A generalized hush fell and after a great deal of muttering the dining room was plunged into darkness. Either side of him his small cousins emitted squeals of glee as a footman walked from the servery, his face illuminated by the glow of six candles atop a mountainous chocolate cake. A rousing chorus of 'Happy Birthday' burst into force and Teddy looked around the table at the beaming faces surrounding him before fixing his eyes to his mother's as the cake was laid before him, her perfectly pitched voice audible above all others.

"Hip hip hooray!" Robert cheered as everyone else joined in. "And one for luck!"

"Blow 'em out!" Louisa yelled, standing up on the chair, her party dress dangerously close to the lit cake.

Teddy put out an arm to ward her off before screwing up his eyes and making a wish. _I wish for Papa to be here. _He opened his eyes and took a deep breath before blowing out the wavering flames with due gusto. More applause.

"Maybe your wish is going to be granted," Louisa's father said with a wink, indicating the mountain of presents on the table. "What do you think?"

Teddy looked back at him stonily for a moment before Mary handed him the knife to cut the first slice of cake.

"You don't need to tell anyone your wish, Teddy," Sybil said kindly, kissing the top of his head and lifting Louisa down from her teetering position looming over the candles.

After the children had devoured their slices of cake, hands were hastily wiped and all eyes turned to Teddy again as he began to tear the paper from countless toys and books, an obligatory 'thank you very much' leaving his lips each time without prompting. He read every label dutifully and smiled attentively at the present giver as he admired whatever they had bought him.

"What's that?" Louisa asked, her gaze alighting on a present that had been too large to place on the table. "What is it, 'eddy?" She repeated, patting his arm and pointing.

Teddy glanced at his mother.

"It's for you, open it." She smiled stiffly.

Teddy got down from the table uncertainly; whatever it was it was very large and he cautiously turned over the label to read what was written there. _Dear Teddy, Happy Birthday, All my love, Papa. _He could feel everyone watching him and a slightly uncomfortable lull had fallen on the room. The silence was duly broken by Louisa who seized a piece of the paper and began to rip; her little sister tottered unsteadily away from Sybil's skirts in order to join in. The back of Teddy's neck prickled and with his head bent, he helped them until the irregularly shaped gift was revealed beneath the wrappings in all its glory. It was a handsome pedal car, a seat for the driver in the front and room for two small cousins in the back. Louisa and Isabella gamely clambered in with shrieks of delight, clapping their hands and waiting expectantly for their driver. Teddy stood very still, one hand resting on the little windscreen at the front. He could feel the unpleasant threat of tears stinging his eyes and his cheeks reddened.

Mary reached out to take his shoulder but he shrugged her off and in the next moment broke into a run and fled the room, pulling the party hat from his head and throwing it down by the door. His feet beat on the floor and pounded on the stone slabs as he tore down the servants' stairs, tripping on the last one and landing on his knees at the bottom with a small stifled cry. The servants' hall was empty and with tears now streaming down his cheeks Teddy sloped down the corridor and peered into the butler's pantry. His face crumpled when the butler looked up from his desk, Carson's expression turning from delight to alarm as he got up quickly and came over to where the boy stood in the doorway.

"Master Teddy, what on earth is the matter?" He asked kindly, leading him to the chair and sitting him down on it.

"I am just so sad," Teddy replied, a fresh sob brimming in his voice.

"Sad? Now that is no way to feel on your birthday," the butler replied, handing him his handkerchief. "Was Mrs Patmore's cake not to your liking?"

"It was very nice," Teddy nodded, "but Papa bought me a present, and I don't want a present." He took a deep breath, his hands clenched together in his lap. "I just want him to come back!"

"Ah, I see." Carson nodded, pulling up another chair and sitting down opposite him.

"I wished it, but I got the car and that is not the same at all," he shook his head miserably.

"No it isn't," Carson agreed.

Teddy ran his finger along the beveled edge of the desk.

"I must have been very bad," he said quietly, his eyes following the individual lines that ran into a knot of wood on the table leg. "For God to take Papa."

"You are not bad," Carson said firmly. "God takes the ones we love and there is no reason for it."

His confidant's eyes rested gently on Teddy's crumpled brow and he wanted so much to believe the butler, believe that all of this was not somehow his fault and yet everything was so muddled. He wanted to remember the last expression on his father's face but he couldn't. He recalled Richard wiping mud from his cheek and then nothing, only an eerie emptiness, a stretching hole and the motionless jeweled breast of the pheasant. Teddy looked down at the gift tag that was still in his hand and he let the tears roll with a satisfactory slowness down his cheeks. He thought of his family upstairs and how it almost seemed like his father had never existed, that he had been rubbed out, all remnants dusted away under the table, not to be mentioned again. How could he have a party if Papa could not come?

"You will be missed upstairs," Carson said gently.

"I don't much feel like playing musical statues with Louisa and Isabella. They cheat." He replied, with a small smile of sufferance.

"Then you must teach them how to play by the rules," Carson paused, eyeing the little boy who was so like his mother. "There will always be people here for you to turn to Master Teddy, do not ever think you are alone."

* * *

><p>Mary arranged Teddy's gifts for display in the library, placing the numerous birthday cards on the side table and mantelpiece. She could hear Louisa and Isabella cavorting loudly in the great hall, an occasional thud caused by a collision with a wall or piece of furniture as their father struggled to maintain order. She would wait a little longer before going to find Teddy; undoubtedly he was with Carson, the man in whose company she had often sought refuge as a child. She was aching and exhausted, and her heart broke when she recalled the expression on Teddy's face as he had laid eyes on the present, the gift from beyond the grave. She had considered not giving it to him or at the very least removing the label but she could not and she was caught unawares by a glittering, slightly surreal memory of Richard.<p>

The car had been delivered from Harrods the week before the shooting party, Richard having been unable to resist the opportunity to buy it at once despite it being months until Teddy's birthday. He smiled widely at her as with the help of Ridley and one of the footmen he carried it upstairs to deposit it in a bedroom under a blanket. This was a Richard she had seen in flashes and glimpses over the years, benevolent and generous, so very eager to please. She could not wipe that image from her mind.

"The girls are enjoying that car."

Mary turned and gave her father a tired smile as he watched her face anxiously.

"I'm not even sure Teddy will want to play with it," she sighed.

"He is a resilient child," Robert said, beckoning for her to sit down beside him as he took a seat on the sofa. "And he is very dearly loved."

Mary nodded, her throat tight as her father took her hand in his.

"I have not been the best father," he continued.

"Papa," Mary said, clasping his hand tighter.

Robert patted her hand to quiet her protest and looked away for a moment.

"I always thought I would be able to protect you but I was wrong. I look at you and I see years of pain that I have either not noticed or ignored."

He wished to say so much more but he could not and he ducked his head to hide the emotion in his eyes.

"Oh, Papa," Mary said and her lip trembled.

"I hope I can now be a better grandfather."

Mary fell into his arms and Robert held onto her tightly as she buried her face in his neck. _His darling daughter._ He kissed her cheek as they parted and she recalled the gentle assurance of his words the day she married Richard, that blackest of days.

"You must trust me, my dear," he said, smoothing her fingers with his thumb. "To always guard Teddy's interests."

Mary used her finger to catch the tear that slid down her cheek. _If only you knew, Papa. _She let the moment last, allowed herself to believe for a second that if her father knew the truth he would forgive her. That he would not recoil in horror at the lies that had unconsciously infiltrated every thread of their lives for so long. She composed herself and found herself smiling in a manner she hoped made her seem comforted by his words.

Robert for his part wished he could see past her mask, that he could say, _I know_, and hope some of the weight would fall away from her shoulders. Yet he could not, he dared not, for how would it end, how would their lives continue with such a hole ripped into their family? Robert gave Mary's hand a final squeeze as she got up, leaving the room in search of Teddy, a last sad smile over her shoulder. Robert had barely had time to catch his breath before the door opened once more and his mother appeared, a look of mild annoyance around her pursed lips as she glanced back with a quick exhale of breath into the sounds of chaos and girlish screams.

"Those girls are positively wild," she breathed with an air of transferred exhaustion. "I do not know how dear Sybil bears the noise."

"They are full of life," Robert agreed, standing as his mother took a seat.

"And that car! I fear for the antiques."

"They are having fun with it," he replied, rubbing his brow.

"Yes, well at least someone is. Poor Teddy," Violet replied, shaking her head slightly. "I must say you do not look full of the joys of spring either, Robert. Are you unwell?"

"I am tired, Mama. Extremely tired."

"We have had quite a time that is certainly true. I cannot say I relish the thought of visiting Rosamund this season, she tells me that we continue to be the talk of London." Violet raised her eyebrows as if the sound of gossip had already reached her ears. "I'm afraid we have become notorious." She paused for a moment, her fingers kneading the top of the cane.

"Don't make light of it, Mama." Robert sighed wearily.

"I am not," she replied with indignation. "I was certainly never fond of Richard but I feel ghastly for Teddy, to lose ones father at such a young age is frightful."

"Teddy has certainly not had much luck in that department," came the muttered reply.

Violet caught his eye sharply, fixing him and trapping him under a bright all seeing gaze. Her head inclined to one side as she watched her son with an air of careful calculation. Silence settled around them for a moment.

"Perhaps there is still something to be done about that," Violet said, each word perfectly pitched and weighted with meaning.

"I think it is rather too late," Robert replied carefully, anger once more rising unexpectedly in his stomach.

"I see," his mother responded and Robert thought that she did see, she saw very clearly. "And the estate?"

"Birkenhead is introducing reforms, I suspect they will come into force in the next year, it is possible the entail could be broken if Matthew and Lavinia do not have a son." He pressed his fingers to his brow as a headache swelled and expanded there.

"Well then, all is not lost."

"Isn't it?" He got up, his cheeks flushed with the sense of impending illness. "I'm sorry, Mama, I do feel rather ill. I'm going upstairs."

Of course he should have suspected that if anyone knew it would be his omniscient mother and yet he could not speak about it with her, he could not voice the feelings that rushed and thundered through his mind. Robert sat down heavily on the bed in his dressing room and thought of how easy it was for life to twist and diverge, to veer inescapably from a path that had once seemed so sound.

* * *

><p>Mary turned the page of the book, her lips pressed against Teddy's soft hair as she launched into a reasonable approximation of a train conductors voice, which went unappreciated as he began to doze against her. She kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet up on the sofa, repositioning Teddy beside her and tucking herself in around him, the book forgotten on the floor. Her nose touched the warm, soft nape of his neck and Mary breathed in the smell of soap and the irresistible musky scent that was so unique to Teddy. Exhaustion pressed down over her and a pleasant feeling of lightheadedness cushioned her mind; her limbs became heavy and she felt herself sinking away with Teddy enveloped in her arms.<p>

It was in this position that Matthew found them as he was shown through by Carson, the scent of the rainstorm still clinging to his clothes. Teddy had turned inwards so his face was buried against Mary's chest and he was snoring softly, his mouth ajar and his soft lips lax. Carson raised a somewhat curious eyebrow as he left Matthew standing in the middle of the room, watching them sleep, his face pale and his own mouth slightly open. Matthew could feel his heart pounding and he considered leaving them and going in search of Robert, but found he could not face that prospect. He laid down the small present his mother had wrapped by the armchair and sat down, his elbows resting on his knees; for a moment he considered lowering his face into his hands. It was only the threat of being discovered there in such a position of bleak surrender that prevented him from doing so. He felt an intruder, he _was_ an intruder and he was a coward.

Matthew realized then and afterwards, that Mary feared the finger on the trigger had been his, that he had shot Richard. He had been possessed by a madness that was true and on two occasions that weekend he had been but a hairs breadth from crossing a threshold from which he could never return. He could have killed Richard all too easily, and yet he had withstood the detective's somewhat lazy interrogation with the calm detachment of a blameless man. But night after night, frantic dreams had sought to convince him that even the act of thinking it had cast him so far out into the water that he would never reach Mary again.

He longed to reach out and sweep away the silky chestnut hair that had fallen across Teddy's brow or to press his lips to Mary's cheek. He longed to do those things so much that his hands twitched and ached with all their unfulfilled intentions. He had threatened to kill Richard and then he was dead; he had frightened her with a darkness she didn't know he possessed.

"Cousin Matthew?"

He turned and blanched slightly at the sight of the Dowager Countess eyeing him from the doorway.

"We didn't think you were coming," she said in a stage whisper, her eyes flickering to Mary and Teddy as she made her way to a chair, waving him down as he made to stand.

"No, well I suppose I am rather late, the party seems to be over."

"I find a children's party is often best arrived at once it is over," Violet replied but with a hint of undeniable fondness as Teddy snuffled in his sleep. "I'm sure we can find you a piece of cake that hasn't been mauled by Isabella."

"No, no thank you, that's quite alright," Matthew glanced at the present by his feet self consciously, and in doing so drew Violet's attention to it. "It's just a little something for Teddy," he explained. "From all of us."

"I see," Violet said archly, tapping her cane on the floor involuntarily. "From all of you. Are Cousin Isobel and Lavinia here?"

"No, Lavinia has been unwell, I left her in Mother's capable hands."

"Ah, what a fate," Violet replied, allowing a small thin smile to alight on her lips.

"I hope things are settling down here," Matthew said, his voice ringing with a falsity that Violet did not hesitate to acknowledge.

"I think things could be a good deal more settled."

Matthew withered slightly under her imperious expression.

"I do not know what can be done Cousin Violet," he replied, the emotion straining in his voice as he willed Mary to stir and end this conversation. "I have gone wrong at every turn."

"And now you may not break free, the bonds of marriage being such as they are, I quite see," she shook her head both agreeing with her own statement and despising it. "But there is a future and for that child that future must be here, at Downton, and you must ensure that is so."

Matthew nodded, choked.

"I wonder if the manner of Richard's passing makes a move in any desirable direction impossible," she said the words with a strain at her neck as if she could barely consider their meaning. "I think I know you a little better than that but then there is always some madness in love, and when we are mad the things we do are unthinkable, and often unforgivable."

_I didn't do it, _the words almost tripped from Matthew's lips but as he moved to speak, Teddy let out a little cry and Mary stirred, cradling the child to her breast. She blinked up first at Matthew and then her grandmother, startled as she pushed herself to a sitting position, Teddy yawning noisily against her.

"Well, I shall leave Teddy to receive his present," Violet said, giving Matthew a look that suggested both collusion and despairing acceptance.

"Do you normally have conversations whilst other people sleep in the same room?" Mary asked, straightening her blouse and skirt as Teddy rubbed his eyes and blinked at Matthew with an air of sleepy confusion.

"Did you bring me a present?" He asked. "Thank you ever so much!"

Matthew handed over the gift and watched as Teddy opened it, unable to acknowledge Mary's cool expression.

"Oh this is ever so nice!" Teddy beamed, the hair on the left side of his head comically on end. "It's a yo-yo, Mama! That boy James has one you know."

Mary nodded and smiled as Teddy inexpertly let the string wind out in an ever increasing line from the toy until it dropped uselessly to the ground.

"I'll get the hang of it," he said self effacingly.

"I'm sure you will." Matthew replied.

"I'm going to go show it to Grandpapa."

"I think Grandpapa is resting, Teddy." Mary said, brushing the creases from the back of his shirt.

"Oh, well Carson then."

They both watched as he skipped from the room, the toy clasped in his hand, a quick bright glance back over his shoulder at them. All the light in the room seemed to flee with Teddy and Mary rose to follow him.

"Mary," Matthew's voice was hoarse but firm as he grasped her hand.

"No, Matthew. I can't." She shook her head slightly, her eyebrows knitted, her eyes meeting his only briefly.

Mary tried to shake him off but he held fast.

"Let me go, Matthew!"

"I_ can't_," he replied and his expression was so penetrating as he looked at her that she could not help but return his gaze.

"You _must_," she wrenched her hand away. "Go to your wife." And the words pierced her heart.

It fell upon them both simultaneously, the sickening sense that they had been here before. The memory seemed to fill the space between them.

* * *

><p>June, 1940<p>

"Matthew," I say, my hand rests over his and I shake it slightly as the taxi pulls into Connaught Square.

"Mm," he stirs and I recognize the awful transference between the dream and reality on his strained features.

"We're here."

This house became my sanctuary, my escape, and the recollections of Richard seemed to slip away into the ether with the consistency of gossamer; sweeping and touching but barely registering as time moved on and the fabric frayed. This was the home you returned to each holiday from Harrow, settling into our easy companionable routine, your laugh and buoyant charm filling each room. Inevitably we would travel to Downton but in London I always felt that our easy love flowed without the cruel interruptions of unuttered secrets. It feels strange to have Matthew here, to see him step over the threshold, his eyes roving and absorbing the details of this life he had no part in. I take his hand to assure him that he is welcome, that he has a key to this piece of the past, to this element of you.

I lead him up the sweeping staircase and down the corridor. We stop outside your room for a moment and my hand pauses on the doorknob as I steel myself against what I am to face. I open the door but I am unprepared and I raise my hand quickly to my mouth to contain a cry. Matthew's hand is ready at my back and he supports me there before we step inside. I stand in front of the handsome bookcase, my shaking fingers tracing along the spines of well loved childhood tales, passing over the assortment of knick knacks; toy soldiers, cars, trains, before I alight on a smooth round object, a yo-yo. I do not pick it up and I know Matthew has seen it. It is his turn to cover his mouth and something like panic shades his eyes, the intensity of his grief in that moment unbearable. I move towards him but he backs away and I let him leave the room before he begins to cry.

I move slowly around the room as if in a trance and I feel like you are here, at every age, a little memento peaking out at me at intervals to cast me back to a happy time. I open the trunk at the foot of the bed and remove the christening shawl that is lying on top, savoring the feel of the fabric between my fingers and breathing in a sweet smell that somehow remains after all this time. Your school hat is here, your first pair of shoes, certificates and reports, but my eyes do not focus. I cannot look too closely as if each item holds the whisper of a future lost.

Your funeral will take place at Downton tomorrow. I will be composed, I will be brave, but here in this room with you surrounding me, I am permitted the peace to fall apart. I sit down on the floor, the shawl around my shoulders and your hat in my lap and I cry. I cry for you as if each sob could fill the emptiness that pushes its way into my heart.

* * *

><p>Mary falls asleep as soon as we retire to bed at the Dower House and I am glad because I do not think I am able to speak, the slightest inflection in her voice sending me into a spiral of emotion I can barely conceal. I see every flinch, every twitch of pain around her mouth, the way her eyes shine constantly with tears that are yet to be shed. I can say nothing although I know there must be a way to express something more than the hold of her hand can convey. I cannot bear to think of tomorrow.<p>

I spoke to Lavinia on the telephone before we left London – _I am so sorry about Teddy _– and the tremble in her voice caused my own chest to tighten. I heard that kind naïve girl who loved me far more than I deserved and I accepted the genuine sorrow she felt on my behalf. She has consulted a lawyer and will direct all correspondence through my solicitor. When I speak to Lansdale at the house he tells me Her Ladyship has left and is staying with an aunt in Kent – _She said she will miss the place M'Lord –_ and I will miss the easy simplicity with which I felt she moved through life, absorbing and shouldering every sorrow until it became too much to bear. Like you she had known the truth for longer than I could ever have imagined and it had trickled down to darken that once clear heart.

There is no pretense, every mask has fallen away and a bedroom is ready and prepared for Mary and I to share. Your grandmother seems as if she cannot remember what propriety is, she moves like a ghost, your aunts pale and constant at her side. I am vaguely aware that other members of the family are staying at the Abbey and I have no concept of how much they know or what they think of my staying here. I have moved far from being interested in how anything appears to others. I do not sleep, I lie on my back, my eyes examining the shadows on the ceiling and I realize this is the first time your mother and I have shared a bed for the night. I cannot imagine ever sleeping apart from her again. I lie there as the light shifts and changes around the room, alighting on unfamiliar objects and shapes. Outside bird song begins, shrill in its insistence as dawn spreads across the bed. How can the sun rise on this day?

I cannot go. I realize that when Mary emerges on the landing after dressing, bathed in black lace, her face white but steady. I feel as if she knows what I am going to say.

"I'm sorry. I am so sorry, but I… I can't."

A coward until the end but I feel if I walk into that church I will lose all sense of my self, I will scream and cry. I will disgrace your memory, I do not deserve to stand beside your mother and say goodbye to you. She does not reply and her eyes flicker for a moment over my face, agony stretching the skin across her cheekbones. She nods before turning away. I watch her descend the stairs, my hand gripping the top of the banister until pain courses through my palm.

"Where is Matthew?" I hear Sybil say.

"He isn't coming." Mary replies and I imagine her linking arms with her sisters.

I listen to their hushed voices and finally the door shuts behind them and I sink to the floor at the top of the stairs, the top hat hanging limply in my hands between my knees. I grit my teeth in an attempt to contain a violent impulse but it does not work and I burst to my feet, throwing the hat down and drawing my foot back to kick the wall. A sensation shoots up my leg, but it is not pain, I feel nothing. It does not help and my hands shake with a powerless rage, a black dog wrestling upon my back that I cannot throw off. I cannot shed it and it rips and tears down my spine unrelentingly. The house seems to shrink away around me in its silence, judging me, eyes closed to this wild rage. Nothing will impinge on this insurmountable grief. I push my way blindly back into the bedroom, searching, rifling through drawers and wardrobes, desperate for something; what I do not know. Something of you to calm me just for a moment. I knock over a forgotten clutch bag on the dressing table and from it slips something that I recognize immediately.

_Teddy, October, 1918._

You look at me from that photograph, your eyes capturing mine as soon as I turn it over. I raise my fist to my lips; my teeth sinking into my knuckles as I pick it up and I know where I must be. You were returned to me, we were reunited and for that at least I must be thankful. I have been woefully absent at almost every essential moment but there was only one place I ever belonged; with you and with Mary and this is my last opportunity to do what is right. This time, forever.

* * *

><p><em>We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.<em>

I sit between Sybil and my mother and I feel strangely distant, yet this has none of the reassuring falsity of a nightmare, no creeping comfort or promise of a fresh day beyond the veil. The vicar speaks and I hear him, I see the coffin and my head tells me you are inside it. My heart is barely beating. There is murmur through the congregation which I do not notice until Sybil takes my hand and grips it tightly, turning to look over her shoulder as Matthew walks down the aisle. I breathe. I breathe a deep true breath and after seats are quickly exchanged he sinks down beside me and takes my hand in his.

_Thou hast set our misdeeds before thee: and our secret sins in the light of thy countenance._

Your father's eyes do not leave mine, and I hold on tighter to the threads of my composure. Finally we turn back to face the altar but our fingers remain entwined.

_As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen._

The photograph is held carefully in Matthew's other hand and a nauseous despair surges through me as I look quickly away from it.

_In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed._

A hush settles and the vicar draws breath.

"I will now ask if there is anyone who wishes to speak."

With a last press Matthew's hand leaves mine and I watch numbly as he steps up to the lectern. He looks briefly at those assembled before his eyes settle on mine.

"I cannot express in my own words how I feel today, so I will rely on those of a more eloquent man," his lips are a pale thin line but I do not see his hands tremble as he rests them on the platform in front of him. "_Say not the struggle naught availeth_…

_The labour and the wounds are vain,  
>The enemy faints not, nor faileth,<br>And as things have been they remain._

_If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;_  
><em>It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd,<em>  
><em>Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,<em>  
><em>And, but for you, possess the field.<em>

_For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,_  
><em>Seem here no painful inch to gain,<em>  
><em>Far back, through creeks and inlets making,<em>  
><em>Comes silent, flooding in, the main.<em>

_And not by eastern windows only,_  
><em>When daylight comes, comes in the light;<em>  
><em>In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!<em>  
><em>But westward, look, the land is bright!<em>

I fear I may break then and his eyes turn back to mine, the words on his next breath flow through me and everything and everyone else drifts away unprotesting.

"Teddy was a very young man but an impossibly fine one. A far greater man than I, and a better son than I deserved."

A barely contained intake of breath seems to pass through the silence like a wave. I close my eyes. The secret shatters, it breaks and is reduced to minute fragments on the stone beneath our feet. I am released and a small piece of shadow falls away.

_Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother, Theodore, here departed: we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life._

We remain in the graveyard in each others arms long after the swath of mourners has drifted away, the ground open and gaping beside us.

* * *

><p><em>Epilogue<em>

August, 1940

I kiss Louisa's cheek and she smiles back at me bravely. I smooth a strand of hair from her face and she so reminds me of Sybil the night of her debutante ball. The night Matthew and I danced as if we would always be so happy.

"Oh Aunt Mary," Louisa whispers. "I wish Teddy were here to dance."

"So do I, darling," I reply, "and you must think of him tonight and dance in spite of his absence, as he would have wished you to."

Louisa is summoned away by Sybil for a final briefing and I sink down at the dressing table. I think of this time last year when you led Isabella in a hysterical fox trot around the drawing room of Grantham House, practicing your steps for the upcoming evening of dancing, Louisa whooping from the sidelines. I smile a little as in my minds eye I see your grinning, handsome face, all the intelligence and the promise. I cast myself back to recall one particular evening during that last London season and grief creeps its way into my chest, dampening each breath.

You had taken a young and impossibly pretty debutante around the dance floor, you were elegant and courteous and my heart swelled with pride as I feigned interest in the conversations of the regal chaperones around me. A voice caught my ear and I inclined my head slightly in an effort to listen – _It is a shame Theodore Carlisle is so very handsome; it almost makes one forget who his father was _– I turned, in as slow and poised a manner as I could muster and directed my gaze at the two women behind me – _you know nothing of my son, or his father. _They were silenced, as was everyone else in the immediate vicinity and I turned back to watch you. I could not bear for any aspersion to be cast on you and I felt ashamed that at my own debutante ball such a comment might have passed my lips all too easily. A man should be judged as he is, as he presents himself and not as he appears in the stud books. It still embarrasses me to think of my behavior toward Matthew, my snobbery, my denial of what I saw at the heart of him; and in turn my motives for encouraging Richard. The women's conversation quickly resumed with a renewed fervor but I did not trouble myself to attempt to listen. They did not know Richard and neither, I now realize, did I.

I know your father; the torturous snaking doubt that had so constricted me after Richard's death did not grow but it lurked on the edge of my mind and it cultivated my distance from him; from all I knew of him. They fell between us: Richard, your grandfather, _the curse is upon us, _and it was as if there was something inherently broken in Matthew and I, something that would not be forgiven. It was not you, you were not broken, you remained that perfect, combined piece of us both. All of the good in our hearts, all of the light in our sky.

You would have had a home at Downton. Your father has spent years since the new laws were passed secretly unwrapping and severing the entail in order to make you his heir. It will never be, but your fortune will save the estate as my mother's did over half a century ago and it will leave Matthew free to bequeath it to whomever he chooses.

Louisa looks breathtaking and she is surrounded by suitors. I see the little glances and occasional shadows that move across her face and when she looks to me I give her a reassuring smile. _He is here with us. _I sit straight backed in one of the chairs around the wall of the ballroom, each muscle stiff and my heart beating slowly. I miss you so very much, a weight across my shoulders that feels as though it will never lift, as though it will exist for always and grow as much a part of me as you were. There is perhaps something comforting in this.

"Lady Mary, would you care to dance?"

Matthew is standing in front of me and for a moment we are twenty-six years in the past, and I am still considering his proposal of marriage; delaying through an innate sense of shame that in the present seems obsolete. I take his hand and he draws me up into a hold that is a little closer than is proper. His face is very close to mine and for a moment his skin brushes my cheek.

I look into his clear blue eyes and I see you there as our fingers interweave and I sense stares settle upon us. I feel it but the room may as well be empty. We dance and something of the beginning starts to blossom back through our touch. Perhaps it is never too late.


End file.
